


Let the Darkness Bring Us Into the Light

by arinrowan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: All for One has a villainous plan that's based on more than spite and boredom, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Autistic Character, Autistic Mutou Yuugi, Bullying, Crossover, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Jonouchi is very protective, Medical TW, Midoriya Izuku has a lot of emotions, Other, Other characters and tags will be added as the plot progresses, Sensory meltdowns, Shadow games don't work like that, The millenium items don't exist, Yuugi believes in his friends, and the trouble that ensues, but most of the millenium item holders will show up in the background at least, but right now it's a story about the two of them growing up together, except for when they do, lizards happen, meltdowns, they're going to get to UA eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2019-07-04 21:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 57,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15849576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arinrowan/pseuds/arinrowan
Summary: Yuugi was never interested in becoming a hero. But he's always wanted friends. Friends who he could rely on, and who could rely on him, no matter what. And after meeting Izuku, Yuugi's determined to support Izuku as Izuku becomes a hero. Even if it means getting involved in heroics, getting dragged into way too many fights, being around way too many loud people, and winding up involved with too many dumb secrets.





	1. Do You Want To Play a Game?

“Do you want to play a game?” is the first thing out of Yuugi’s mouth after he approaches the green-haired boy playing by himself near the sandbox. They’re at a park near Yuugi’s house, and this is the second time Yuugi’s seen this boy. This close, Yuugi can see he has a lot of freckles. He looks around, like Yuugi might have been talking to someone else. Maybe someone with an invisibility quirk? Yuugi doesn’t know anyone with an invisibility quirk, though one kid in the class up from him gets semi-transparent whenever he’s upset. 

“Are you talking to me?” asks the boy, when no one with an invisibility quirk has replied.

Yuugi nods. “Yes. Do you want to play a game?” he repeats, in case the boy forgot. 

“Yes!” the boy blurts out. “Yes, I- um...what’s the game?” His eyes dart around Yuugi, like there might be other people with invisibility quirks behind him. “Heroes and Villains?”

Yuugi swings his bag over his shoulder and onto the ground, so he’s sitting next to the boy. “I don’t really know how to play Heroes and Villains, but I have a bunch of games we can play in here!” He takes a minute to struggle with the zipper- the bag belonged to his Jii-chan so it’s kind of big for him, and balancing it on his shoulder is super tricky, but it has a lot of space in it, and that’s what matters. Even if the zipper gets stuck a lot. Finally it slides open and Yuugi starts pulling games out. He’s gotten really good at cramming them in there. 

“Do you… carry all those games with you everywhere?” asks the boy after a moment.

“Well, if I haven’t played with someone before, I don’t know what games they’ll like,” Yuugi explains. He’s had to explain this to a lot of people. “And there’s a lot of people I haven’t played with.” 

“…So you might not get to play with them, if you don’t have the right games, so you try to make sure you have as many games as you can just in case?” asks the boy slowly. 

Yuugi lights up. No one else has gotten that before. “Yes! Exactly!” 

The boy reaches carefully for the stack of games Yuugi has unloaded on the ground, then pulls his hand back like the boxes might be slimy or greasy. “I don't… really have any games that I don’t like, that I know of. So I don’t know what would be a good game?” He raises his voice at the end so it sounds like a question. 

“’There’s no such thing as a bad game, just games that aren’t right for the people who are playing them’,” quotes Yuugi. His Jii-chan says that whenever Yuugi asks why the store still sells Monopoly, even after the Backdraft Incident. “What matters is that you have fun, and if playing the game isn’t fun, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, just that you need to find a different one.” 

“I guess that makes sense,” says the boy. “Is playing games part of your quirk?”

Yuugi focuses on arranging the games he’s pulled out. “No. My Jii-chan just runs a game shop so we have a lot of games.” 

“That sounds cool,” says the boy after Yuugi doesn’t say anything else. “…your hair’s really neat.” 

Yuugi jerks his hands up to cover his hair, and then immediately feels bad because the boy flinches and curls in on himself kind of like a sea anemone Yuugi had poked in a tidal pool one time his Jii-chan took him to the beach. “Don’t pull on it!” 

“I won’t!” says the boy. “ Sorry, I won’t touch it. Promise.” He swallows. “My name’s Midoriya Izuku. What’s your name?”

Yuugi squints at him for a moment and then carefully lowers his hands, “Mutou Yuugi.” 

“Nice to meet you, Yuugi,” says Izuku. He swallows again- he must be thirsty. It is pretty hot today “What game do you want to play?” 

Yuugi picks out a board game that doesn’t have a lot of cards or play pieces, so that when Izuku gets bored or decides to throw stuff at Yuugi he can pack up and leave without losing too much of the game. Only Izuku keeps playing, keeps asking questions about the game, and smiles while looking at Yuugi. They play for about an hour, then Yuugi’s alarm on his watch goes off and he has to head home. Izuku jumps up and his face scrunches up when he sees the time, but he asks Yuugi if he’s going to be in the park tomorrow. Yuugi says yes, and Izuku turns and starts running. He stops running at the edge of the park, looks back and stares at Yuugi, and waves to him suddenly. Yuugi waves back. He fiddles with the bag, trying to make it sit better on his shoulder, and heads home. 

“How was your day?” Jii-chan asks at dinner. He’d made broiled fish, which he makes for four out of five meals, miso soup, and stir-fried green peppers. 

Yuugi carefully measures out the rice for each of them. Cleaning the rice, making sure to set the rice cooker, and serving rice are Yuugi’s jobs, and have been for the past three years, since he turned five. “I found someone who played a game with me at the park! His name is Midoriya Izuku and his hair is green.” 

Jii-chan sets one umeboshi the color of Yuugi’s eyes on top of each bowl of rice. “That’s good. Did you have fun?” 

Yuugi nods. “He didn’t pull on my hair or rip the game up or kick dirt on the board or anything. We just played until my alarm went off and I had to come meet you at the store.” 

Jii-chan sort of gets a look like he’s bitten into an umeboshi, even though Yuugi can still see his on the rice. “I’m… glad to hear that. Are you going to play together tomorrow?”

Yuugi shrugs, takes a bite of his rice. “I dunno,” he mumbles around the rice. “He asked if I’d be there tomorrow but didn’t say anything about him being there or playing with me.” 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” says Jii-chan, who then takes a bite of fish and keeps talking. “That probably means he’ll be there and wants to play with you again.” 

“Oh,” says Yuugi. He guesses that makes sense. And it would be nice, to play with Izuku again. His foot swishes as he thinks about it. He eats some of his fish and pokes at the peppers. “Can we play a game after you do the dishes tonight?”

“Eat your peppers and we can play poker before you get ready for bed.” 

Yuugi scrunches up his face. “Are you going to cheat?” 

“Yuugi, it’s just as important to know how the rules of the game may change depending on who you’re playing with as it is to know how to play a game,” says his Jii-chan, which means yes, Jii-chan is going to use his probability quirk while they’re playing so Yuugi can’t win unless he marks the cards or outbluffs Jii-chan. Which almost never happens, since Jii-chan is the one who taught him how to mark cards in the first place and Yuugi’s not great at making his face do things. 

“What if I eat my peppers and do the dishes?” tries Yuugi. 

“We can play a few extra rounds if you help with the dishes, but you still need to learn how to adapt,” says Jii-chan, finishing off his fish. 

Yuugi sighs a sigh that starts deep in his stomach and pokes at his peppers again.  
____________________________________________________________________________________  
Like Jii-chan said, Izuku does show up the next day. He’s panting and out of breath.  
Apparently Izuku’s apartment is a lot further away from the park than Yuugi’s house, and Izuku’s sort of not supposed to go this far on his own, and he almost got in trouble for being late getting home yesterday. When Izuku doesn’t damage or rip up the board game again, Yuugi offers to meet him at a park that’s further away for Yuugi but closer for Izuku. Izuku’s face lights up when Yuugi says that, and he smiles really big, like meeting up with Yuugi and playing games with him is fun and not a waste of his time. He keeps smiling at Yuugi like that over the next few weeks, doesn’t call Yuugi dumb or weird or get bored while they’re playing and wander off.  
It’s… nice. Most people pay just enough attention to him to notice him and then stop. His hair, his brain stuff, and his situation with his quirk are the most obvious things about him, and after people talk about them once they don’t bother to again. Even when people at school pull on his hair or mess with his games it’s like they’re not really paying attention to him, and usually they get bored after a while and wander off to do something else.

Izuku hasn’t gotten bored though, and doesn’t seem like he’s getting bored. He keeps asking Yuugi about the different games in his bag, or starts talking at Yuugi about heroes and quirks, which Yuugi doesn’t know a lot about but he’s good at nodding in the right places and remembering key phrases. Izuku doesn’t seem upset that Yuugi doesn’t remember all of the information about heroes, same as Yuugi doesn’t get upset at Izuku for not remembering the things he tells him about games, and Yuugi starts to expect to see Izuku at the park every day, and setting the alarm on his watch so it goes off with enough time for him to meet Jii-chan at the store from the new park instead of the closer one. 

Izuku, Yuugi realizes after a few weeks, keeps playing with Yuugi because he doesn’t have anyone else to play with either. It’s weird though- Izuku smiles a lot, and doesn’t yell or throw stuff, and Yuugi knows his classmates and other kids their age like talking about heroes and quirks, which Izuku is good at doing. Why doesn’t he have other people to play with? “Why are you playing games with me?” Yuugi asks finally, because it’s bugging him. 

Izuku flinches. Yuugi was teaching Izuku how to play Crazy-8s with a set of cards he and Jii-chan hadn’t marked yet, so Yuugi couldn’t tell what cards they were dealing. “I can- if you want me to go, I can?” says Izuku, and his hands are shaking a little. 

Oh no, he’d said it wrong. “No, I like playing with you! But - you don’t carry a bag of games around with you. And you know a lot about heroes, and hero merch, and quirks. People like that stuff. Why are you hanging out with me instead of other people?” 

Izuku doesn’t say anything. He lowers his cards and Yuugi tries to look away so he doesn’t see his hand. Maybe they can reshuffle and redeal? “I’m quirkless,” says Izuku in a very small, quiet voice, like they’re in class and he’s admitting to a teacher that lizards got into the classroom again. 

Yuugi frowns again. “Okay? But what does that have to do with lizards- oh.” He looks down, fiddles with the collar of his gakuran while carefully putting his cards face down on the ground, and thinks. 

“…Lizards?” asks Izuku. His voice is still very small. 

“You sounded like you were confessing to the teacher the lizards were back,” says Yuugi absently. He’s never met anyone his age that was quirkless before- it used to be a lot more common, but according to his Jii-chan it’s decreasing exponentially with each generation. So Izuku’s pretty rare. 

“…are there a lot of lizards at your school?” asks Izuku, sounding confused. 

Yuugi frowns again. “They keep getting into the classrooms and the teachers keep saying it’s because we’re not cleaning them enough, and then make us stay longer for cleaning. I think it’s someone’s quirk but no one can figure out whose.” He considers again, looks up from his collar and back at Izuku. “I don't think that’s my quirk.” 

There’s a long pause. Izuku’s looking at him. He’s discarded the cards, face-up, and his hands are fidgeting. Yuugi’s cards were better. “You… don’t know what your quirk is?” he asks, carefully. 

Yuugi shakes his head. “My quirk’s invisible. Dr. Tsubasa says the x-ray shows I have only one toe joint but we don’t know how it manifested. Or manifests.” 

Izuku’s eyes go up to his hair. “So your hair isn’t-“

“Everyone thinks it is, but my Jii-chan has really similar hair and he has a probability quirk. I don’t have a probability quirk, we’ve checked that.” And it would have manifested by this point, if only so Yuugi could FINALLY beat Jii-chan in a card game. 

“Dr. Tsubasa’s my doctor too,” says Izuku, after neither of them says anything for a while. 

Yuugi picks both their hands up and starts shuffling the deck so his hands are doing something. “Having wings seems like it would be really cool until you need to sit down,” says Yuugi, because he’s thought about this a lot. “He says his grandkid has wings but not what he does on the subway, or if people have to sit behind him at the movie theatre.” 

“He’s… in my class at school.” Izuku sounds weird, like he did the first few times they met up and he kept twitching any time there was a loud noise. “He, um. He keeps having to sit in the back, since his wings block out the blackboard.” 

“That sounds a lot more annoying than lizards,” says Yuugi, because it does. He keeps shuffling. “Is there other stuff you want to do?”

“What?” asks Izuku. 

“We can do stuff besides play card games or board games,” says Yuugi, since if Izuku is quirkless other people probably are going to keep not playing with him, so Izuku will probably keep playing with Yuugi, and if he keeps playing with Yuugi it isn’t fair for them to just do stuff Yuugi likes. “So what do you want to do?” 

“You still want to play with me?” asks Izuku, which is a dumb question since Yuugi wouldn’t have asked him what other stuff he wanted to do if he DIDN’T want to play with him. 

“Yes,” says Yuugi instead, because he likes spending time with Izuku and doesn’t want to call him dumb. 

Izuku’s eyes start watering and suddenly he’s crying and oh no, Yuugi said the wrong thing again, what did he say, what is he supposed to do, there isn’t a teacher or Jii-chan he can ask and now Izuku’s going to be mad at him and he doesn’t even know- Izuku lunges at him and Yuugi flinches and tries to jump back because he thinks Izuku is going to pull his hair but instead Izuku’s… hugging him? He’s crying and hugging him and also dripping on him. Yuugi can’t move his arms because he’s still holding the cards and Izuku has a death grip around him but he tries to make soothing noises, the way his Jii-chan would when he had a nightmare. 

Eventually Izuku stops crying and Yuugi gets his arms back, even if his uniform has… wet patches. He doesn’t want to think about it. “Are you- um. Are you okay?” he tries, which seems safe enough to ask. 

Izuku reaches into his bag and pulls out a package of tissues, and blows his nose. “Yeah. Um. Sorry about that. I cry really easy.” 

“It’s okay,” says Yuugi, because he’s worried mentioning Izuku dripped on him would make him cry MORE. “…So is there other stuff you like to do?” It’s the third time asking, and if Izuku doesn’t say something he’s not asking again, Izuku’s getting stuck with card and board games because this is entirely too complicated. 

Izuku wipes at his face. Green eyes look really weird when they’re red from crying. The green parts look more green and the red parts look more red. “Do you like video games?” 

“I like playing video games,” says Yuugi. “Just, arcades are loud, I don’t have a game console, and I don’t have a lot of pocket money.” Also, there was the time he wandered into a Yakuza fight at the pachinko parlour but Jii-chan told him that was unusual. His Jii-chan also said that he had no idea how Yuugi had managed to find one of the few pachinko parlours that was still run by Yakuza, and if it happened again, leave or hide instead of trying to move to a different aisle. 

Izuku nods. He bites at his lip. “…what about playing Heroes and Villains?” 

Yuugi feels his face scrunch up. “You said that when we met- how do you play that?” He perks up. “Are there cards? Game pieces?” 

“No, it’s not that kind of game. One of you pretends to be a hero and the other pretends to be a villain and you chase each other to see who can defeat who!” Izuku’s voice gets quicker as he talks, and his face looks a little less red. “And like, if you have hero action figures you can carry them around and pretend to be that hero!” 

Yuugi frowns. “…So it’s like tag, but with action figures?” Yuugi has to run in gym class, and has to play tag in gym class when the teacher decides that’s the game they’re playing, but he’s never wanted to play it outside of class before. Maybe it’s more fun when there’s only two people and you can’t ignore each other? Also, there was another problem. “I don’t have any hero action figures.” 

“That’s okay, I have a lot of them! You can borrow some of mine!” Izuku rocks back and forth the way Yuugi does when he’s excited. “I can bring some tomorrow!” Izuku stops rocking and looks at Yuugi, and his eyes are still a little red. “Um. That is- as long as that’s okay?” 

Yuugi sighs. Izuku keeps playing games with him, and he’s really nice, and Yuugi wants to be nice to him. “It’s okay.”

“…Tomorrow?” asks Izuku, sounding hopeful. 

Yuugi sighs again, already trying to figure out what games he’ll have to leave at home and how to pack his bag to make it easier to run. “Tomorrow.”  
____________________________________________________________________________________  
Tomorrow doesn’t go as planned.

They meet at the park like normal, and settle under a tree to play a round of Crazy-8s before playing Heroes and Villains. Izuku’s bag looks almost as full as Yuugi’s; Yuugi wonders how many action figures he brought. Hopefully they’re not going to have to carry all of them while running. It’s probably like how Yuugi has a lot of games in his bag; they don’t have to play all of them, but it’s nice to have the option. He hopes. 

Izuku’s not really paying attention to the cards and is instead talking about All-Might and waving his hands around. He keeps forgetting he’s holding cards in one of the hands he’s waving around so Yuugi winds up seeing his hand without even trying. Yuugi’s beginning to realize Izuku is probably a bad person to play cards with if he wants to defeat him with just skill, since Izuku has accidentally shown Yuugi his hand in each card game they’ve played so far. Also Yuugi doesn’t think Izuku knows what a poker face is and Yuugi feels like he’s not the best person to explain it. 

Yuugi is about ready to end the game and let Izuku start showing him the action figures or running around when there’s a weird banging sound, sort of like fireworks but smaller. There’s also a weird, faint burnt sweet smell. Izuku suddenly stiffens and jerks around and stands up. His face is really pale. 

“Oi, Deku! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice about their age yells. There’s more banging and more burnt sweet smell. 

Yuugi looks from Izuku towards the voice and banging. There’s a blonde kid stomping towards them, with four other kids behind him. One of them has wings. Something about the wings is familiar. Yuugi puts his cards down and looks back at Izuku. Izuku’s shaking slightly, like he might fall over. 

“Who’s Deku?” asks Yuugi, standing up with his back to the tree. 

Izuku’s eyes keep darting from Yuugi to the blonde kid stomping towards them, “It’s, um. If you read the kanji for my name you can read them as Deku, so it’s, um. It’s-“

“…But your name’s only Deku if you read the kanji wrong,” says Yuugi, confused, because that doesn’t make sense. “Is he really bad at reading?” 

Izuku looks like his eyes are going to pop out of his head and there’s another loud bang and burnt-sweet smell only much closer and Yuugi flinches. “What did you just say?” snaps the blonde, who was loud enough to hear him. “Are you trying to make fun of me, weird-hair?” 

Yuugi was going to reply but instead his eyes drift to the kid with the wings and he realizes what’s familiar. “You’re the one who has to sit at the back so you don’t block out the blackboard,” says Yuugi, because his brain likes to relay useless information to his mouth at really bad moments. Yuugi doesn’t have a chance to say anything else because the blonde kid grabs his arm and shoves really hard, and there’s the loud noise again and the burnt sweet smell and it feels like Yuugi’s arm is on fire, and he falls over, and then the kid kicks him really hard in the stomach. 

“Kacchan, leave him alone!” yells Izuku, and there’s more yelling and more noise and Yuugi wants to look at Izuku, wants to get up and grab him and run. But his arm hurts, and it’s loud and the banging sound keeps happening and the burnt sweet smell is really strong and he can’t breathe, just stare at the ground and make wheezing sounds because something’s wrong and nothing’s coming into his lungs and the noise and smells are flattening out and suddenly he doesn’t hear or smell anything. 

Noise and smell and sight trickle back. It’s still hard to breathe but air’s coming into his lungs. It’s quieter, even if everything still smells burnt and sweet. He’s shaking, a little, but he focuses on his breathing and the shaking slows down, stops. He looks up from the ground and sees the blonde kid- Kacchan? – and the others walking away. 

“Yuugi! Yuugi! Are you okay?” Izuku yells from behind him. 

Yuugi flinches. “Loud,” he says, because it is. “I’m okay.” His voice feels gritty and there’s snot and spit on his face. Gross. He sniffles. He tries to sit up, decides to spend another minute curled up on the ground and closes his eyes again. 

“You started shaking all over after Kacchan kicked you, and you didn’t respond when I said anything, and you kept shaking-“ 

“Sorry,” says Yuugi. He opens his eyes, tries again to sit up again, fails. His stomach still really hurts. “Sometimes that happens.” He swallows, looks up at Izuku. “Are you okay?” 

Izuku’s crouched next to him. His eyes are red and teary, his nose is bleeding and there’s angry red marks on his arms. “You kept shaking,” repeats Izuku. “You kept shaking and you weren’t okay. That happened to a kid at my school once, was that a seizure? Did you have a seizure? Do you need to go to the doctor or a hospital or is there something else that needs to happen, is that going to happen again-“

Yuugi winces because that’s a lot of words and they’re running together. “Talk slower, can’t understand.” 

“Sorry,” says Izuku. He swallows. “Are you okay?” he asks, slower. “Was that- what happened?” 

“Loud stuff gets really loud sometimes. Or bright stuff gets really bright, or smelly stuff really smelly. If it doesn’t stop my brain has to stop for a little bit, so it can make everything make sense again.” He sniffles. He hates it when he cries, it feels so gross. “It was really loud and bright and smelly.” He rubs at his eye. “Do you have any tissues?” 

Izuku digs into his bag, giving Yuugi a chance to try sitting up for the third time. It works, even if he winces because of his stomach. He sees his cards on the ground. Some of them are burnt, others are stepped on. It would bother him more, if there was more space to feel inside him right now. “Who was that?”

Izuku hands him the tissues and he tries to wipe off his face. He hands Izuku a tissue for his nose but Izuku just holds it in his hand and keeps looking upset. “Kacchan. Bakugou Katsuki. We go to school together. He’s-“ Izuku swallows. “He’s my friend.”

“Oh,” says Yuugi. His stomach hurts in a different place than where he was kicked. Even through the blankness that covers everything after his brain shuts off, he’s sad. He looks down at the ground and the burned cards. “So you’re going to go play with him?” It makes sense. Yuugi likes games too much and always says the wrong things and Izuku just saw him black out and drool and cry because things were loud and smelly, and normal people don’t do that. Izuku’s played with him longer than anyone else has but that was probably because he was too nice to tell Yuugi to leave him alone until today. 

“What-“ says Izuku. “No! No, I'm-“

“It’s okay,” says Yuugi, which is a lie but Izuku’s been nice to him, he doesn’t want to make this harder for him. “I’m not gonna be mad, I know playing games gets really boring and I’m weird-“

“Yuugi!” yells Izuku, which is too close and too loud and Yuugi has to close his eyes again. “Sorry,” says Izuku in a quieter voice. “Yuugi, I want to play with you, I’m not gonna go play with Kacchan after he kicked you and burned your cards.” 

Yuugi opens his eyes and looks at Izuku. His face is all red again, which still looks weird with his hair and eyes. Especially with the blood under his nose. “You want to play with me?” he repeats, because he’s pretty sure he heard Izuku wrong. “Your nose is bleeding,” he then has to add, because his mouth is still really unhelpful. 

Izuku seems to remember the tissue he’s holding in his hand and finally holds it up to his face and mops up the blood under his nose. “You’re really good at explaining how games work and trying different games if I don’t understand how to play, and you’re meeting me at this park instead of the one that’s closer for you, and you listen to me talk about heroes and quirks.” He swallows. “And you don’t call me stupid.” 

A lot of what Izuku said Yuugi doesn’t feel like his brain can understand right now, so he focuses on the part at the end. “I like you, why would I call you stupid?” 

Izuku’s face scrunches up and more blood comes out of his nose and his face gets redder and oh, that is gross, that is GROSS, Yuugi looks back at his burned and crumpled cards. He probably should pick them up. He’s going to have to throw the deck out, and there’s a paper disposal can at the conbini across the street. He picks up the ones he doesn’t have to stand to reach while Izuku makes snuffling noises and blows his nose really loudly. “…I’m sorry Kacchan destroyed your cards,” says Izuku after Yuugi’s grabbed all the ones in reaching distance. 

Yuugi shrugs. “They don’t cost a lot to replace. It would have been harder if we’d been playing a board game.” Yuugi’s gotten pretty good at replacing and repairing game boards with cardboard and markers and tape, but it’s still kind of a pain.

“Kacchan doesn't like playing with me,” says Izuku, in the same quiet tone that made Yuugi think of lizards yesterday. “He used to. But. He got his quirk. And I didn’t. And he doesn’t like me bothering him anymore.” 

“You’re not bothering me,” says Yuugi, because Izuku isn’t. He swallows. “…am I bothering you?” 

“No!” says Izuku. “I want to keep playing with you.” 

“Okay,” says Yuugi. He swallows again and looks back down at the burnt cards in his hand. They stink and he thinks the smell is going to stick to his hands for a while, like when he helps Jii-chan peel garlic. “…I don’t really want to play Heroes and Villains today,” says Yuugi. “But. Um. I don’t mind if you want to show me your action figures?” Because Izuku probably had brought a lot of them and Yuugi thinks some of what he was saying about All-Might earlier involved the action figures, and also Yuugi right now still feels weird and fuzzy and doesn’t want to have to get up or walk anywhere, even if the area under the tree stinks like his hands will. 

Izuku’s face lights up and he grabs his bag. So that WAS the right thing to say. 

. “…Deku still doesn’t make any sense,” says Yuugi as Izuku opens his bag and starts pulling out at least twenty action figures, because this is important. “That’s not how you read your name.” 

Izuku stops pulling out action figures and stares at Yuugi. Yuugi tries to stare back but has to stop, and instead looks back down at the burnt cards in his hands. “You’re right,” says Izuku finally. “It’s not.” 

___________________________________________________________________________

Jii-chan got very quiet when he saw Yuugi’s arm was burned, quieter than he does when Yuugi comes home with bruises. He got the wrinkle in the middle of his forehead that shows up whenever he tries to make omelets when Yuugi told him Izuku’s friend Bakugou had done it, though the wrinkle evened out a little when he told Jii-chan that Izuku had more burns. Jii-chan cleaned the burns after they took baths, reminding Yuugi to keep them clean and dry, and told him not to play with Bakugou again. Yuugi didn’t want to play with Bakugou again, or for Izuku to play with Bakugou again, so he agreed. More importantly, Jii-chan didn’t tell him to stop playing with Izuku. Yuugi’s really bad at lying to Jii-chan and he likes playing with Izuku. Who said he liked playing with Yuugi and wanted to keep playing with Yuugi. No one’s ever told him that before. 

Jii-chan had Yuugi pick a board game for them to play before bed, and told him to bring Izuku to play at the shop next week, once the new prelease is over and things are less busy. Yuugi thinks Izuku might like the shop, even if it’s further away than either park and Izuku would probably have to leave super early to make it home in time. There’s a lot more games there than Yuugi can carry with him, and a lot of them are hero-themed or sponsored. Yuugi would play at the store more except there isn’t always the space and Jii-chan doesn’t like him to ask customers to play with him except on Sundays, which are open game days. 

He meets up with Izuku at the park the next day. Izuku’s nose is still redder than normal. Without really talking about why, they decide to go to the nearest arcade instead of staying in the park. The arcade is in the 3rd Street shopping arcade that leads into the subway shopping arcade and is usually pretty empty this time of day, only they’re about two intersections away when they have to go around because the street is closed from an earlier hero fight. 

“Do hero fights happen here a lot?” asked Izuku, staring at the broken window front and the two police officers directing traffic away from the area. One of the police officers is bright purple and looks like she’s about to fall asleep. 

Yuugi shrugs. “I guess? I’ve been late to school twice this year because of them.” His school at least had a policy where you didn’t need a note for a hero-related tardy, as long as it showed up on the news bulletin by lunchtime. He still hated showing up late, whatever the reason. Everyone stared at him and the teachers would make him apologize to the entire class. 

“That sounds really exciting,” says Izuku. “I don’t think anyone’s had to miss classes or be late because of a hero fight at my school!” 

Yuugi shrugs again. Hero fights happen a lot. Damage from them happens a lot. The game store’s needed repairs twice that Yuugi can remember because of hero fights, and the last time Jii-chan was arguing with the insurance for almost five months before they paid him back. Money had been really tight and Jii-chan had changed rice brands. The new rice had taken twice as long for Yuugi to rinse clear and hadn’t had the right texture.

“Hey Yuugi,” says Izuku as they’re nearing the covered shopping arcade. “Wouldn’t it be cool to be a hero?”

“No,” says Yuugi immediately. 

“Oh,” says Izuku. He seems confused. “Um. Why not?”

“You have to fight people, people yell at you and get mad at you, and you have to wear really weird uniforms,” says Yuugi. He grimaces. “Like gym clothes, only worse.” Someone at school tried to tell him heroes choose their uniforms, that there’s a lot of science involved in costume design, but Yuugi thinks that’s dumb. Who would CHOOSE to wear things that look that uncomfortable?  
“You… don’t like hero uniforms?” asks Izuku slowly, like Yuugi just said he likes ketchup on his hamburgers instead of in omuraisu, where it belongs. 

“Like gym clothes, only worse,” Yuugi repeats. He hates having to change out of his normal clothes. 

“…I think professional hero uniforms are going to be more comfortable than gym clothes?” says Izuku. “I mean, they have to fight in them? And each hero’s uniform is designed by their Support staff for them. It doesn’t make sense for them to be uncomfortable.” 

“There’s the really loud blonde one with a radio show who wears a giant speaker around his neck,” says Yuugi darkly. He does not like the loud blonde hero. His quirk is being very loud. Yuugi does not like very loud things. 

“Present Mic?” asks Izuku. The light gets dimmer as they enter the shopping arcade, and they have to navigate around sales racks in front of the stores. 

Yuugi frowns. “Probably? He wears a giant speaker around his neck, I don’t think there’s another hero that does that, and it HAS to be worse than gym clothes.” 

“It’s a support device, he needs it to help direct his quirk,” says Izuku. He starts muttering. “Like, it’s probably not much worse than wearing, like, a helmet? Or safety glasses? Maybe a brace? It doesn’t seem to impair his mobility, he doesn’t have a hard time turning his head or directing the output of his quirk...” 

“I don’t want to wear a giant speaker around my neck,” says Yuugi firmly, because he doesn’t. 

Izuku frowns. “It’s a support device for his quirk, you wouldn’t need to wear a speaker around your neck if you were a hero unless it supported your quirk.” Izuku fiddles with the strap on his bookbag. “Wouldn’t you want to be a hero to help people?” 

Yuugi frowns. They’re almost at the entrance to the arcade, which is loud enough Yuugi can tell he’s not going to be able to follow most of what Izuku’s saying once they head inside. “I don’t think you have to be a hero to help people,” says Yuugi finally. “I think being a hero just means people pay more attention to you when you do. What game do you want to play?”  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
“Do you think someone that’s quirkless can become a hero?” Izuku blurts out, several days after the incident at the park. They keep meeting up at the park and heading somewhere else. Jii-chan promised Yuugi a cellphone when he turns ten; having one would make meeting up with Izuku a lot easier. Today they’re walking along one of the canals that runs underneath the train tracks and the overpasses. Sometimes you can see heroes out of uniform training or running there, and one time when he was six an amphibian villain accidentally tried to drown Yuugi underneath the 4th Bridge, but it’s mostly empty today. 

“Why do you want to be a hero?” Yuugi asks in response, because he knows he misses a lot of stuff but Izuku really likes heroes and is the only quirkless person he currently knows. 

“Because I want to be like All-Might,” says Izuku immediately. He’s speaking very quickly, so quickly Yuugi almost has a hard time following him. “I want to be someone who always smiles, and lets people know they don’t have to be afraid, and helps everyone and saves everyone!” 

Yuugi frowns. The burns on his arm have gotten to the point where the skin is peeling, and he keeps pulling at the loose white bits even though he knows he’s not supposed to and it makes it hurt more. “Do you have to be a hero to do all that?” Also, Yuugi’s not really sure what smiling has to do with being a hero, even if All-Might does seem to smile a lot. It… actually kind of creeps Yuugi out. A little. 

“Heroes help people and heroes save people, and I want to do those things, so I want to be a hero,” says Izuku. He’s fiddling with the strap on his bookbag again and looking straight ahead. 

“I don’t think you need to be a hero to do all that stuff,” says Yuugi. Izuku’s face starts to fall and he stops walking. Yuugi stops walking too. His stomach feels sick. “Just- a lot of jobs involve helping people, not just heroes!” tries Yuugi. “Like, fire fighters, or paramedics. Or nurses. Or-”

“I don't want to be a fire fighter, or a paramedic, or a nurse, or a doctor, or a police officer!” yells Izuku, which is the loudest Yuugi has heard him, ever, and Yuugi flinches back. For a second he thinks Izuku is going to hit him. “I want to show that I can help people as a hero! That it doesn’t matter I’m quirkless. That I can still save people!” Izuku starts shaking, and Yuugi realizes he’s crying again. “I want to show people I’m not just a useless Deku. That being quirkless doesn’t mean I can’t help anyone!” Izuku just keeps crying, loud, wet sounds, and Yuugi doesn’t know what to do or how to help him. 

“You’re- you’re not useless,” Yuugi tries. “And your name isn’t Deku.” 

Izuku keeps crying. The sound makes Yuugi think of when he’s scared, when things are too bright or too loud and he can’t make them stop and there’s no one there to help him. He swallows. “Being quirkless doesn’t make you useless. You’re not useless, Izuku.” 

“Yes I am,” chokes out Izuku. “I didn’t stop Kacchan when he kicked you, I didn’t stop him at school today, or yesterday, I can’t do anything-“

Yuugi is in so over his head, and he just wanted to hang out with Izuku and play some games and have a friend who didn’t make him feel sick in his stomach, and thanks to Bakugou showing up none of that’s happening, and Yuugi decides that’s it, he’s DONE. “That doesn’t make you useless, that makes Bakugou a jerk!” he yells. Izuku flinches, then looks at Yuugi. His face is red and gross and Yuugi hates that someone made Izuku feel like that, that someone keeps making Izuku feel like that. “He’s the one who burned me and you, and he’s the one who can’t read your name right!” 

Yuugi stops yelling, panting. Izuku keeps staring at him. He’s still crying, but it’s quieter, less ragged. It’s hard to stop crying when you’ve been crying that loud, Yuugi knows. Yuugi swallows. “I don’t- I don’t get heroes. But. Being quirkless doesn’t mean you can’t help people. And I- I don’t think it means you can’t be a hero, to help people.” 

Izuku keeps staring at him. Yuugi is at least ready this time, when Izuku launches himself at Yuugi and hugs him. He wraps his arms carefully around Izuku and pats him on the back, slowly, the way his Jii-chan does. Izuku’s still crying, but it’s slower, less ragged. Finally it stops. 

“No one thinks I can be a hero,” says Izuku once he’s stopped dripping on Yuugi. His voice is raspy. Izuku lets go of Yuugi, takes out his bag of tissues and scrubs at his face. It’s pretty hopeless, his face is gonna be gross for a while after crying that hard. 

“Bakugou says you can’t be a hero, and he’s a jerk, and he smells bad,” says Yuugi, because all of those statements are true. He thinks hard about what Izuku needs to hear right now, about what his friend needs to hear. He takes a deep breath, and hopes he’s saying it right. 

“You can be a hero, Izuku.”


	2. Lizard Man, Lizard Man, and Lizard Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuugi has a long day, learns more about lizards, and probably needs to pick a better route home.

“Can you tell the lizards to stay out of the classroom?” 

It’s after school and Yuugi is stuck on trash duty for classroom cleaning AGAIN. The teachers haven’t noticed any lizards in the classroom for at least three weeks, but their class STILL has to spend an extra twenty minutes on cleaning duty every day. Yuugi doesn’t mind cleaning but at least at the game shop or the house he gets his allowance from helping. Staying longer at school to clean just means less time to do his homework or meet with Izuku, and it’s not like the lizards seem to notice anyway. And he hates taking the trash to the incinerator room, everything smells weird and there’s spiders, and even though cleaning chores are supposed to be rotated the teachers keep catching Yuugi solving metal brain teasers under his desk or reading ahead in his textbooks during class so he keeps getting trash duty. He’s really glad they don’t have to clean the bathrooms until middle school. He’d be stuck cleaning bathrooms EVERY DAY. He’s in the hallway on his way back from the incinerator room (one of the spiders by the door was lowering itself ominously and he keeps rubbing his hair to make SURE it didn’t drop onto his head) when he runs into the student in his class he’s been thinking about asking this to for WEEKS, and the words just kind of fall out of his mouth without warning. 

“Just because my family name is Tokage doesn’t mean I’m the one bringing the lizards!” snaps Tokage-kun. He’s the smartest student in their class, with an intelligence-enhancing quirk that has something to do with remembering things or analysis or memory processing. Izuku would probably be able to figure it out if Yuugi described it to him. He sits two seats up and three over from Yuugi and is closer to the door and Yuugi takes longer than everyone else to pack his backpack, so Yuugi hasn’t been able to catch him alone after class until now. “My quirk has nothing to do with lizards!” 

“I’m not asking- oh, you’re right,” says Yuugi, blinking. Lizards and Lizard, he hadn’t noticed that before. Actually he thinks he remembers people teasing Tokage-kun about it? Those exchanges suddenly make more sense. “Yeah, Intelligence something. No, I was asking because there were lizards crawling into your backpack three times this week. Also four times last week. And twice the week before that?” Yuugi thinks he noticed one the week before before that but wasn’t sure, which was why he started paying attention to the floor around Tokage-kun’s backpack in class instead of the window or his desk or Nosaka’s clothes moving because she got excited again. 

Tokage-kun stares at him with a weird look on his face. And then Yuugi’s hair is being grabbed (he hates he hates he HATES PEOPLE GRABBING HIS HAIR) and Tokage-kun is dragging him towards the bathroom and Yuugi’s following because HIS HAIR IS BEING GRABBED, but at least Tokage-kun lets go of his hair once they’re in the bathroom. Still. “Don’t grab my hair!” Yuugi yells. He has many body parts people can grab that aren’t on top of his head, why does everyone want to grab that one? 

“…how did you notice they were crawling in my backpack?” asks Tokage-kun. His voice is much lower than before. 

“Don’t grab my hair!” Yuugi repeats, glaring at him. He didn’t tell the teacher he saw the lizards or try to go through Tokage-kun’s bag to see if the lizards were really there, and he made sure not to ask Tokage-kun in front of their classmates, and Tokage-kun is repaying him by GRABBING HIS HAIR. 

Tokage-kun glares back. His eyes are a very bright, intense blue. Yuugi keeps glaring. He has to stop glaring at Tokage-kun before Tokage-kun stops but he keeps glaring. Just not at Tokage-kun directly. His shirt is dark green and has a pattern Yuugi thinks is supposed to be hero-related. He’ll ask Izuku later. 

“Okay,” says Tokage-kun finally, in a voice like Yuugi is being difficult and Tokage-kun is being mature. He hears that voice A LOT. “I won’t grab your hair. How did you notice they were crawling in my backpack?”

Yuugi shifts his weight. “The tails are blue. They stand out.” The classroom floor is dark browns, and the tails are a really bright metallic blue, and Tokage-kun’s backpack is a darker blue, so Yuugi’s eyes kept pushing the blues together. “Can you only summon blue-tailed lizards?” Yuugi can’t remember if the classroom lizards have always had blue tails, but any he can remember from this year have. One time the teacher tried to grab one by the tail and the tail CAME OFF and the lizard dropped, but the tail kept moving, and Yuugi doesn’t care how many times their science teacher had explained a lot of lizards have regenerative quirks and the tail would grow back and the lizard would be fine, limbs are NOT supposed to just fall off and keep moving. And like. Yuugi knows sea cucumbers do something similar, they can literally puke up their entire digestive system at something trying to eat them out of self-defense, but then it takes them weeks to regrow it and they can’t eat anything during that time. So it’s probably not great for the lizard either. 

“Technically they’re skinks, they’re called five-streaked lizards, and I’m not summoning them!” Tokage-kun raises his voice at the end in a way that makes Yuugi wince. He eyes the bathroom door. Tokage-kun is between him and it, and they’re standing closer than Yuugi wants to to the urinals. 

“What’s the difference between lizards and skinks?” Yuugi asks, trying to edge away from the urinals and closer to the door. Tokage-kun has the look Izuku gets when heroes come up, and maybe getting Tokage-kun talking about lizards might distract him, and then Yuugi could sneak off to some place that wasn’t the bathroom. 

“Skinks are a type of lizard, but most of them have small legs and a short neck. A few varieties even have no legs, though not the five streaked lizards,” says Tokage-kun like he’s reciting from a book. Yuugi tries moving towards the door; Tokage-kun glares at him and moves to stay between Yuugi and the door. Yuugi’s beginning to wonder if Tokage-kun actually knows how to look at people without glaring. “…And just because I know that doesn't mean I’m bringing them into class, lizards have nothing to do with my quirk!” He points at Yuugi. “You’re the one who keeps insisting you have an invisible quirk- how do I know you’re not the one bringing them into the class? Or my bag?”

Yuugi’s mouth falls open and he stops trying to sneak by Tokage-kun, because what. “My quirk doesn’t involve lizards! And even if it did, why would they be in your bag?”

Tokage-kun crosses his arms. “No one knows what your quirk is so it could involve lizards, and I’m not the one summoning them, so why would I know?” 

This is… not going how he planned, and is getting really, really dumb, and Yuugi’s pretty sure if this keeps going he’s going to be here for HOURS and there are a lot of places he wants to be that aren’t arguing with a classmate in the bathroom about who is and isn’t summoning lizards (skinks?) into their classroom and getting them extra cleaning duty. “Okay, your quirk has nothing to do with lizards that are skinks or with us having to clean the classroom over and over AND OVER again, so there’s no point asking you to stop summoning them at school, can I go now?” 

Tokage-kun continues glaring at him but steps out of the way so he can get to the door. “Just remember- if you try and-“ 

Yuugi hurries to the door and is almost out but then he remembers what else he wanted to ask, and despite it probably being a dumb idea, turns back around. “Oh, since you know about lizards-“

“-But they have nothing to do with my quirk,” says Tokage-kun AGAIN, which, Yuugi hadn’t SAID anything this time about them having to do with his quirk.

“- do they like riceballs?” Yuugi finishes. “Because I usually have some riceball in my bag, and I don’t like them when they get too old, but I can never finish an entire one, and the leftover bits don’t taste good but I don’t want to throw them out.” 

Apparently Tokage-kun can look at people without glaring, because he stops glaring and just stares at him. Yuugi has no idea what Tokage-kun’s face is doing. It looks like a mix of biting down on pickled ginger by mistake and that moment in poker when you draw the card you need but can’t let your opponent know your hand. “No,” he says finally. “They’re obligate carnivores. They eat bugs.” 

Yuugi makes a face, because bugs have too many legs, and they wiggle. Then something occurs to him and he perks up. “Does that mean you could get them to eat the spiders in the incinerator room? 

That was the wrong thing to say, because Tokage-kun’s eyes narrow and go back to glaring, and he stomps over to the bathroom door so Yuugi will have to shove him over if he wants to leave. “Spiders aren’t bugs, and for the last time, my quirk has NOTHING to do with lizards!”

…One day Yuugi’s going to learn how to not have words come out of his mouth. One day. 

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“So, that’s why I was late,” says Yuugi to Izuku. They’re at Izuku’s place, in his room. There are advantages and disadvantages to meeting at Izuku’s place. One advantage is that Midoriya-san will offer Yuugi snacks and tea or soft drinks, and buys the arare mix that has star-shaped senbei that crunch really nicely in his mouth. One disadvantage is that Izuku’s room has All-Might merchandise on EVERY possible surface, with All-Might’s really wide eyeless smile beaming at you from every direction. It’s… creepy. Really creepy. Yuugi spends a lot of the time he’s in Izuku’s room staring at the carpet, which doesn’t have All-Might’s face on it. Yet. 

“…You said he had an intelligence quirk?” asks Izuku. He’s lying upside down on his bed, and his voice is lower than usual, which means he’s probably going to quirk hyperfocus. “Emitter, mutation?” 

Yuugi shrugs and fiddles with one of the Rubik’s cubes he’s started carrying around. Solving them takes him about four minutes and he’s trying to get his time to under a minute. “He’s super smart and the top of our class in everything. So I guess mutation? Because people would notice him using it in class if it was an emitter?” Spending the past year with Izuku talking about quirks means he’s remembering how they work a little more. 

“Not necessarily, not all emitters have visible activations,” mumbles Izuku. He’s probably doing the thing where he frowns. “….maybe the lizards are a side effect? He activates the quirk and lizards show up? How would his intelligence correlate with the lizards? Does he get intelligence from the lizards? Is he smarter the more lizards show up?” 

Yuugi absently solves the white side of the cube, then sets up the second layer. “There’s never more than one or two lizards in the classroom that anyone’s noticed, so I don’t think it’s related to the number of lizards?” 

“Maybe the lizards are outside the window,” says Izuku. “Maybe the entire side of your classroom is covered in lizards and no one sees it? No, someone would have noticed by this point, that’s a lot of lizards.” 

Yuugi stops twisting the cube and looks at the blue section. The lizard tails are bluer, but he imagines the entire outside of the building covered in blue lizard tails. He shakes his head furiously because that’s even worse than bugs wiggling. “There can’t be that many lizards in Koriban,” says Yuugi firmly. There CAN’T. 

Izuku makes a noise that might be agreement or might mean he needs to drink some water. “Someone would have noticed that many lizards by this point, if just with lizard migration patterns or lizard roadkill or even- what do lizards eat, are they omnivores?”

“He said-“ Yuugi tries to remember the word, “obligated carnivore? That eats bugs?” 

“Obligate,” says Izuku absently. “So they’re insectivores. Okay, so then to feed that many lizards there wouldn’t be cicadas in that area, and someone would definitely notice that in the summer, and-“ Izuku stops talking and Yuugi finishes the second layer of the cube. “Yuugi,” says Izuku suddenly, shifting from the bed so he’s sitting up. Yuugi glances up at him. Izuku’s face has a weird look, like he’s wandered by a trash can someone left wet household trash in during the summer. “Is this the kid you got a higher grade than in the math test who kept glaring at you?” 

Izuku was the one who had called it glaring. Yuugi had just told him that every time Yuugi saw Tokage-kun he was staring at Yuugi really intently, like Yuugi had a bug in his hair (he’d checked) or had spilled his lunch on Tokage-kun’s desk. After having Tokage-kun actually glaring at him for the better part of the afternoon, Yuugi doesn’t think it was glaring. Unless Tokage-kun glares on a spectrum? That seems more likely and Yuugi makes a note to explore it further. “Yeah?” He thinks for a moment. “Oh, that was also that couple of weeks I kept finding a lizard on my desk?” And kept having to show Chouno-sensei his desk was clean after every class, and then she found his stash of Rubik’s cubes and metal puzzles and confiscated them, and Jii-chan had had to come down and talk to the office with the doctor’s note about how Yuugi was allowed to use them in order to get them back, and then Chouno-sensei said they’d been thrown out and couldn’t give them back. Yuugi doesn’t like Chouno-sensei. Her quirk is to change her appearance and whenever she gets angry with the class her face literally melts off. He can’t wait until the school year ends and they change homeroom teachers again. 

“So his family name is Tokage, he knows a lot about lizards, you keep seeing the lizards crawling in his bag, and after you got a better score than him on a math test lizards kept crawling on your desk and getting you in trouble,” says Izuku, slowly. “And no one else seems to have noticed any of this.” 

Yuugi stares at the Rubik’s cube. “Yeah. Well, apparently I think people have teased him about his family name being Tokage, but none of the rest?” 

There’s a long pause. “…are people in your classroom just… really unobservant?” asks Izuku carefully, like he’s worried Yuugi will think he’s being mean. 

Yuugi sighs and drops the Rubik’s cube onto the floor and bangs his head against Izuku’s bed. “I don’t know, I just notice stuff, you know, the stuff everyone else doesn’t notice and none of the stuff everyone else does. And like, I don’t CARE he’s summoning them, I just want him to stop so we don’t have to clean the classroom every day. And if he’s not even gonna admit he’s summoning them I don’t know HOW to tell him to stop.” 

“It is kind of a weird side effect for an intelligence quirk,” says Izuku. He leans off the bed, picks up Yuugi’s Rubik’s cube, scrambles it, and starts trying to solve it. He takes a lot longer to solve them than Yuugi, even after Yuugi told him about the algorithims. “Do you think maybe he’s embarrassed?”

Yuugi pictures Tokage-kun. His hair is always neat, his clothes are always clean, and other than Yuugi seeing the lizards crawling around his bag he’s the model student their teachers always mention when they’re trying to make a point to everyone else about cleaning or getting high marks. “He’s really… organized.” He thinks about the best way to explain. “Like. Like looking organized is his costume?” 

“…I guess if I didn’t want people to know I was bringing lizards everywhere I wouldn’t want to look like the type of person who brings lizards,” says Izuku slowly. “I mean, I don’t know what that would look like anyway.” He starts mumbling again while trying to solve the Rubik’s cube. Yuugi glances up and can tell he’s turning the current part he’s working on the wrong way. “A reptilian physical mutation? Scales or parietal eyes? There’s a new hero called Tatsuma Ryuko who’s called the Dragon Hero, maybe wearing some of her merch?” 

Yuugi considers Tokage-kun while Izuku mutters about the Dragon Hero’s stats and quirk. Whatever the reason was, Tokage-kun didn’t want anyone to know he was bringing the lizards, and it didn’t seem like it was just because their teachers would be angry at him. Which is weird, because Yuugi can’t really think of anything worse in school than the teachers or his classmates being mad at him. Yuugi tilts his head back to look up at Izuku’s progress on the Rubik’s cube. Izuku had figured out he’d turned the cube wrong and was trying to reverse the turns. Only, his hands seem a little stiff as he’s turning the cube. Like he’s trying to avoid moving them too much. Yuugi frowns. Izuku’s also wearing long sleeves again, even though it’s warm today. Something in his stomach feels tight. “Anything happen at school for you?” 

Izuku’s hands pause on the cube, before he starts moving them again and messes up the cube further. He doesn’t look at Yuugi and starts babbling. “No, nothing happened! I turned in my project, you know, the science one I was talking about, and the presentation went well and I think the teacher liked it so I don’t have to worry about it anymore, and Mom said she’d make katsudon for dinner since I spent so much time on it and that’s going to be great, so everything went really well and-“ 

“What did Bakugou do?” says Yuugi, the heavy feeling in his stomach like he ate curry for breakfast getting stronger. 

Izuku stops playing with the Rubik’s cube. He still won’t look at Yuugi. “It’s. I just wasn’t fast enough in the hallway earlier, and he wanted to talk to me about the presentation. It’s fine.” 

Yuugi wants to puke. “He burned your arms again!” 

“Yuugi, it’s fine!” says Izuku again. He’s looking at Yuugi now, with a smile on his face that looks fake even to Yuugi. “It’s- they’re not bad, I just don’t want Mom to know because it’ll upset her, and I didn’t want you to be upset-“

Yuugi feels tears prickling at his eyes and shakes his head furiously, trying to clear them. If he starts crying then a lot of the time Izuku starts crying and it’s wet and gross all around. “He’s a jerk who keeps burning you, of course I'm going to get upset!” 

“Yuugi,” Izuku says in a careful voice, like Yuugi is holding a glass of tea filled to the brim and if he moves wrong it will spill all over. “It’s fine. The burns aren’t bad. I just didn’t want you to worry, that’s why I wore long sleeves. It’s fine.” 

It’s not fine. Yuugi doesn’t know how to say that so Izuku will listen. He looks away from Izuku and reaches into his bag to pull out another Rubik’s cube to scramble. He tries to make his mind focus on the patches of color instead of sickly sweet smells and burn marks. 

Besides. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, twists the cube as quickly as he can. It’s not like he would have been able to do anything to help Izuku even if he was there.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Yuugi makes it through dinner without bringing up getting stuck in the bathroom or that Bakugou’s still a giant butt head. Dinner’s grilled chicken with miso eggplant and miso soup. Yuugi’s pretty sure the miso is the one Midoriya-san made and gave them last month. Watching her make it was pretty interesting- she has these special large plastic trays she scattered rice on top of and then sprinkled with a mold powder, and then left in a covered area of the living room for a few weeks. Yuugi kept sneaking in to look at it whenever he went over. The smell itched his nose but in a good way, and the rice turned a bunch of weird colours from the mold. 

“Midoriya-san wanted to say thank you for the dried fish, and that she’ll give us some more miso the next time she makes it,” Yuugi tells Jii-chan when they start cleaning the dishes from dinner. One of the regulars at the game shop is from a fishing family, and whenever she goes home to visit her family gives her a bunch of dried fish for omiyage. Yuugi and Jii-chan still hadn’t used up all the dried fish from the last time she’d gone home, so last week Jii-chan had said they should give some to Midoriya-san to thank her for sharing her miso, and that Yuugi also could tell Midoriya-san they had too much dried fish but to not go into detail about why they had so much fish because that could be rude. 

Jii-chan makes a pleased sound. “I’m glad she liked the fish. Did you tell her how much we’ve been using it?” 

Yuugi nods so his hair moves back and forth. “Yeah. I told her we keep using it for the fish or veggies or just in soup and it’s really nice.” He likes miso, and it is nice. He carefully dries the dinner plates he’s holding with the dishtowel and frowns. The dishtowel is starting to hold water so drying the dish with it is leaving tiny little water smears. He puts the dish back in the dishrack and reaches for another dishtowel. It feels soft and dry and good prickly, not bad prickly, and he picks the damp dish back up. “Jii-chan, would Mom have been like Midoriya-san?” 

Jii-chan finishes cleaning off the broiling pan he’d cooked the chicken on. He doesn’t respond for a few minutes, while Yuugi finishes drying the rest of the dishes he’d already washed. Jii-chan usually takes a while to say anything when Yuugi asks about his mom. “Midoriya-san is a very thoughtful woman,” he says finally. “Your mother could be thoughtful too. But what always stood out about her was her determination. Your mother knew what she liked and what she didn’t like, and was very good at making it known without being cruel.” Jii-chan gets the small smile on his face Yuugi sees whenever he’s talking about Yuugi’s mom or grandmother. “You’re a lot like her that way, you know.” 

Yuugi frowns down at the dishtowel. It’s dark blue, with a border of small white rabbit heads. “That sounds like a bad thing. Like, being spoiled.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting things, everyone does that. It’s how you go about getting them that can cause problems.” Jii-chan ruffles his hair and Yuugi closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “For example, you don’t want to play poker with your grandfather, ever, but you still play it with me because I enjoy it and because even if you won’t admit it, you know it teaches you important skills.” 

Jii-chan keeps SAYING it teaches him important skills, Yuugi hasn’t agreed to any of that. He leans back and glowers at Jii-chan. “How is not wanting to play poker an example?” 

Jii-chan turns back to the dishes and finishes up the silverware. “Well, instead of playing it with me, you could rip up the cards, throw them around, refuse to play, or yell at me about wanting to play.” 

“But if I did any of that then you wouldn’t play anything with me,” says Yuugi, which is why he only complains a little when they play poker. And whenever Yuugi starts to get really bored or upset with poker Jii-chan always switches to another game Yuugi likes more or hasn’t played yet, so it’s not like he has to play it all the time. Just. More than he’d like. 

“Exactly. You don’t have to want to do something to understand that there are benefits to doing it, or that doing something other people want can result in you getting things that you want, even if it might take longer. Does that make sense?”

Yuugi finishes drying off the last of the silverware and scrunches up his face as he thinks. “Sort of? I guess?” 

Jii-chan checks the rice cooker and the stove to make sure they’re turned off. “Your mother was always very clear on what she wanted, but it didn’t mean she ignored what other people wanted. She just knew how to listen to and be honest with herself, and that’s a skill more people would benefit from.” 

Yuugi considers that. “I am listening to myself, and I don’t want to play poker tonight.”

Jii-chan snorts. “Alright. Chess instead?” 

“Yes!” Yuugi flaps his left hand and grins at Jii-chan, and watches him grin back the way Jii-chan does when Yuugi’s happy about something. 

“Go get the board set up, I need to run down back to the store and grab something.” Jii-chan ruffles Yuugi’s hair again as he walks past. 

Jii-chan taught Yuugi chess earlier this year, and Yuugi really likes it. He’s getting to the point where he wins about a third of the games he plays with Jii-chan. He’s also been playing it on the computer Jii-chan got him for his tenth birthday instead of a cellphone, since he and Izuku can play on the computer together and Izuku’s mom doesn’t want him to have a phone until he’s eleven. Playing online isn’t as nice as playing in person, since Yuugi likes the way the chess pieces feel in his hand, but he does get to play a lot of different people that way. The chess set Jii-chan has is hard stone Yuugi thinks is marble, black and ivory colored, and the pieces are cool and textured where they aren’t hard and smooth. Jii-chan said something about winning it in a card game in Nepal when Yuugi asked. 

“Oh!” says Jii-chan, after he’s come back up and Yuugi’s sitting in front of the set up board, feeling his left leg shake up and down. “Any luck with that lizard thing?” 

“Lizards don’t eat riceballs and Tokage-kun still says he doesn’t have a lizard quirk,” says Yuugi in a rush, avoiding anything about bathrooms. “Black or ivory?”

Jii-chan picks up a black and an ivory pawn, puts his hands under the table for a few seconds, then takes his closed hands back up and holds them over the board. “I would like to be ivory tonight,” says Jii-chan, his eyes glinting. “Which hand do you think the ivory pawn is in?” 

Yuugi sighs. It is a deep, long sigh. Even when it isn’t poker Jii-chan always does these weird games with him. But he still wants to play, so Yuugi narrows his eyes, stares at Jii-chan’s hands, and thinks.  
___________________________________________________________________________________________  
Tokage-kun doesn’t talk to him the next day, though Yuugi sees him glaring at him during math. And lunch. And recess. And probably Tokage-kun would have kept glaring at him and maybe tried to drag him into the bathroom or grabbed his hair again after cleaning the classroom but after another narrow escape with the incinerator room spiders Yuugi went the long way around that takes him by the (probably) not haunted maintenance shed and got into the classroom to get his bag and out without running into him. 

However, Yuugi realizes maybe Tokage-kun had prepared for Yuugi avoiding him after cleaning the classroom. He realizes this because he’s about five blocks from the school when something CRAWLS onto his ARM and Yuugi sort of blanks out and spends some time flailing and trying to get whatever’s on his arm OFF and worrying the spiders were successful and are IN HIS HAIR. Eventually Yuugi realizes he can’t feel the crawling thing anymore, and has checked his hair about three times and found no spiders, but he knows he felt something. 

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach. He carefully pulls off his backpack and swings it around so he’s staring at the front. A lizard (skink?) with a blue-tail, which apparently crawled back onto his backpack while Yuugi was flailing, is clinging to the front. It stares at him. Yuugi doesn’t really know how to read reptilian faces that much better than human faces but it seems unimpressed. 

“Um. Hi,” says Yuugi, which seems polite. 

The lizard continues staring. 

“I just have a riceball and some potato chips. Tokage-kun says you can’t eat them.” 

The lizard keeps staring at him. Its eyes are black. This close, Yuugi can make out five pale yellow streaks on its back that turn a light teal before turning bright blue at the tail. It’s actually very pretty. “Can you understand me?” tries Yuugi. “Does like- does his quirk let what I’m saying makes sense? Or like, did he just tell you to follow me, and you could understand that, but you can’t understand me now because he’s not here?” 

The lizard tilts its head at Yuugi. Yuugi tries tilting his head back at the lizard. He doesn’t feel that much closer to speaking lizard but it does feel nice to stretch his neck. The lizard then climbs to the edge of his bag- they’re really fast, he always forgets that- and stops moving. It turns its head to look back at Yuugi. Yuugi chews on his lip, thinking, then carefully lowers his backpack to the ground. The lizard smoothly crawls down the side of his bag and onto the pavement. Yes, he was right! The lizard looks back up at Yuugi again. It then turns towards a patch of ivy on a nearby wall and scurries off. He watches it. 

There’s a weird wooshing noise to his left. Yuugi looks up and over just in time to see someone slamming into a house about fifteen meters away and a person ON FIRE yelling and throwing a fire ball at the house. 

He loses track of the lizard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuugi's not a fan of Endeavour. 
> 
> Tokage means lizard, in case the context didn't clarify. You're welcome to guess who he is. 
> 
> This chapter took longer to write than I wanted but considering none of the events that happen in it were in my original outline of this story I'm just going to run with it. The chapter was going to be longer but I decided to split it and get this part out. Writing something getting caught on fire made for an excellent transition point. 
> 
> I feel a little bad for killing off Yuugi's mom but she makes a grand appearance twice in the manga and once or twice in the anime depending on the version you're watching, and I like the relationship between Yuugi and Sugoroku. Another change to Yuugioh canon: Sugoroku is Yuugi's maternal grandfather, not paternal grandfather, in this. Why Yuugi has his mom's last name will come up later in the story. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's reading this, and to everyone who reviewed or bookmarked!


	3. i set my card in defense mode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are certain traditions in the Mutou household and Yuugi works on socializing with one of his peers.

“I can’t believe you got to meet the Number Two hero!” Izuku screams.

Yuugi holds the receiver away from his ear and makes a face. Loud. He can’t WAIT until they have cellphones and can text or use messaging programs, when Izuku gets excited he gets REALLY loud. “I didn’t meet him, he punched someone into a building next to me and exploded them?” And the building. Yuugi has a lot of experience with burning buildings. The fire was weirdly well contained but the house was very much destroyed. Though the structural damage from someone being punched through the front wall probably would have resulted in the house needing significant reconstruction anyway. Buildings, especially residential homes, aren’t designed to have giant holes punched or exploded into them. Which seems kind of like a design flaw, considering how often it happens. 

“He doesn’t explode people, that isn’t one of his attacks,” says Izuku, talking so fast the words almost trip over each other. “Oh my god, you saw his Hellfire! Did he shoot a blast of flame? Was it like a spear????”

“… Uh.” Yuugi tries to think about what Izuku would consider important about the fire. “It was fireball shaped?”

Izuku makes a sound like someone having a bucket of ice water dumped on them and Yuugi holds the receiver as far as his arm will let him until the sound stops. He shakes his head rapidly, his ear still sore. “Izuku! Loud!”

“Sorry, sorry,” says Izuku, trying to be quieter and only sort of succeeding. Yuugi gingerly holds the receiver a few inches from his ear. “Yuugi, that was his Flashfire Fist: Jet Burn attack! I can’t believe you got to see it! It’s one of his signature moves!”

Yuugi didn’t know why he’d needed to use a signature move involving fire on a single person in a residential district, but he wasn’t a professional hero or a hero otaku. Maybe it made sense to Izuku. He really hoped the people in the house had hero insurance, or that whichever agency Endeavour was with was one of the ones that followed up with businesses or private homes and helped with rebuilding. And he was worried about the lizard. It had been moving in the opposite direction of the fire but lizards were cold blooded, they didn’t regulate their heat the way mammals did which probably meant they were more susceptible to fire. Even if lizards could heal better than mammals. Was getting burned the same thing as growing a tail back? He’d wanted to look for the lizard to see if it was alright but it had been loud and there was smoke and then the police had shown up, and he didn’t know how to tell that lizard from another five-striped lizard anyway. They weren’t like pigeons. Maybe Tokage-kun knew a way to tell them apart? He could probably ask Tokage-kun on Monday if the lizard had been okay. That seemed like the best way to find out. 

“Yuugi, do you know who he was fighting against? What was their quirk? Was it Dialectic, I know Dialetic’s been active near Koriban the past few weeks and that was probably why Endeavor was even in Koriban around your school anyway,” says Izuku, still speaking almost too fast for Yuugi to track. “That’s why Equilibrium was there last week when we saw him, I checked on the boards and everything!” 

“…He punched them into a building and then he punched a fireball at them?” says Yuugi. “I didn’t really see the other person using their quirk. They were just… punched into a building. And then fireballed.” 

There’s a long pause from Izuku. “Um. Yuugi. Was the person-uh. Were they okay?” Izuku’s voice has suddenly dropped a lot lower and Yuugi has to move the receiver back next to his ear. “They weren’t. Um. You didn’t- they weren’t badly injured or – you didn’t see anything bad, right?” 

Yuugi feels his forehead wrinkle as he tries to figure out what Izuku is actually asking. “I saw a building get destroyed after someone got punched into it and fireballed?”

“No, I mean- the villain he was fighting against? Were they badly injured and did you see it?”

Oh, that made more sense. Yuugi shakes his head. “No, not this time. The police showed up to do the usual stuff along with EMTs and they moved me away from the area.” 

Izuku makes a considering noise. “Was the tired purple one there again?”

Yuugi nods. “Yeah.” Yuugi didn’t remember the first time they’d seen the tired purple officer but she was at a lot of incident scenes in Koriban. He and Izuku didn’t know her name. But she knew Yuugi’s. She always said it like it was three am and Yuugi was supposed to be in bed but Jii-chan had found him playing a game instead. Which. Yuugi wasn’t TRYING to find hero fights or escaping villains or firefights between Yakuza in pachinko parlors. (The last time he’d wandered into one one of the yakuza had recognized Yuugi, paused the fight, and told him to leave. The next time he’d gone back to that parlor he’d gotten extra tokens and a scolding about not paying attention. It wasn’t like he wasn’t TRYING to, just pachinko parlors were very loud and bright and filled with many things that weren’t people that were easier to focus on). “She did the voice again.” He squirms at the memory. 

“She does a really good disappointed mom voice,” says Izuku. “I still think maybe that’s her quirk, or something voice activated, but the thing is police have to warn the public if they use quirks, unless it’s an issue of public safety, but you being there after the fact isn’t public safety anymore, and she’s never said anything about it being her quirk.” Izuku’s voice gets really low as he mumbles something that wanders from voice activation and emitters to quirk law and vigilante quirk use. Yuugi doesn’t mean to but he zones out. Izuku talks so much about quirks it’s hard to pay attention to and remember everything he’ll say about them. 

“YUUGI!” Izuku suddenly screeches, volume back WAY TOO HIGH UP and Yuugi has to hold the receiver away from his head and hiss because BAD NOISE. Izuku says something else but Yuugi can’t make it out. 

“Izuku! Loud!” Yuugi snaps again, because it WAS, and he’d TOLD him, Izuku always forgot when they talked on the phone. 

“Sorry, sorry,” says Izuku. His voice is a lot lower and Yuugi gingerly brings the phone closer to his ear. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

Izuku’s voice raises again, “Did you get his autograph??”

Yuugi pulls the receiver away from his ear and stares at it. He puts the receiver back to his ear. “…He was on fire,” Yuugi says, because he was. He had been on fire the entire time. At first Yuugi had thought something had gone wrong, but then he kept being on fire, and none of the police or EMT or support staff that had showed up had acted like it was strange, and the hero hadn’t started screaming or smelling the way it smelled when someone was burned. Yuugi had tried to stay as far from him as possible. The idea of going towards that fire, of walking up to someone who threw a person into a building, threw fire at the building, and walked out of a burning building covered in flames that kept burning had never even occurred to him. 

“He’s always on fire, that’s part of his costume,” says Izuku, which, WHAT. Yuugi already thought hero costumes were dumb and uncomfortable. It had never occurred to him that they could be dumb, uncomfortable, and ON FIRE. Izuku keeps talking. “Isn’t it awesome?? He couldn’t do that if it was regular fire, he’d get burned, that means the flames he makes are special flames, though they burn like regular flames when they’re separated from his body and after his fights with Subzero someone on the boards theorized that he has to be careful not to get too hot or he’ll injure himself. Though I don’t know how thermoregulation works for him? His core temperature is probably a lot higher than normal, I don’t know what that means if he like, gets a fever or-“ 

Jii-chan’s voice cuts in from upstairs and breaks Yuugi’s focus. “Yuugi! Finish talking with Izuku and go thank your mother and grandmother!” 

Yuugi pulls away from the receiver. “Five more minutes!” he yells back, frowning. He’ll do it when he’s DONE. “Izuku, after that I can’t meet up tomorrow. Can we meet up Sunday instead?” 

“Sure,” says Izuku, going from quirk hyperfocus to schedule planning easily. Yuugi doesn’t get how he can just SWITCH like that. He’s kind of jealous. “Meet at the game store and go hero-watching?” 

Yuugi makes a face since Izuku can’t see it but Izuku really likes hero-watching and it’s always nice to walk around with him. And most of the time they can stop and grab a burger or go into a bookstore or hit up a 100 yen store for Pocky or the chocolate mushrooms. “Sounds good.”

“Maybe we’ll run into another one of the Top 10 heroes!” says Izuku. 

“I don’t want to meet anyone else on fire!” Yuugi says, because he DOESN’T, once a week is enough. 

“Endeavour’s the only one of the top 10 who has fire in his costume and if that was Dialectic he was fighting then he shouldn’t still be in Koriban, ”says Izuku in a tone that Yuugi thinks is probably supposed to be comforting but really isn’t. “But I’ll check on the boards to confirm, alright? See you Sunday!” 

“Later!” Yuugi hangs up the phone and exhales. He guesses it’s good Izuku’s excited he ran into Endeavour. His afternoon doesn’t have to be a net zero. And he can use the time he was going to play with Izuku on Saturday to study. He doesn’t know why but his grades dropped this year and have stayed dropped, no matter how hard he studies. 

“Yuugi!” Jii-chan yells again. “ Your grandmother and mother!”

“I’m doing it!” Yuugi yells back, annoyed. He WAS. He glances over at the butsudan. It’s in a corner of the living room and made of a smooth looking golden coloured wood that had been polished to a clear glow. Opening the box reveals photos of Yuugi’s mom and grandmother, and memorial tablets for the rest of their family. Jii-chan had already opened up the doors and set up the incense pot and candle. Yuugi heads into the kitchen and opens up the lower cabinet to reach for the bowls near the back. “Don’t forget the apple!” Jii-chan yells.

“I’m GRABBING it!” Yuugi yells back, more annoyed. He’s done this enough times, he’s not a kid anymore that needs Jii-chan to tell him how to set up the offerings. He takes an apple out of the fridge and dumps it into the smooth, shallow black lacquer bowl they used for the butsudan. He fills the green ceramic bowl Jii-chan said had been his mom’s favorite with extra rice he’d made at dinner, making sure the rice is packed down in a smooth dome. He stomps back to the butsudan carrying the bowls. 

They weren’t very religious so generally they didn’t leave offerings on the butsudan unless it was a holiday, a death anniversary, or a birthday, but after the second time Yuugi had gotten involved in a villain fight Jii-chan had made it a household rule; whenever Yuugi was in a situation where the police showed up he had to leave an offering and burn incense at the butsudan. Jii-chan said his mom and grandmother were protecting him, which was why Yuugi was never badly hurt, and Yuugi needed to thank them for watching out for him. Yuugi thinks that if they were protecting him it would be a lot easier if they’d just STOP him from wandering into active crime scenes instead of interfering after the fact, but whatever. He guesses it makes Jii-chan feel better because both his mom and grandmother had probability quirks too, even if they hadn’t worked like that while his mom or grandmother were alive. 

He places the bowls in front of the butsudan, on the offering stand on top of the altar cloth, making sure the rice is placed so the incense ash can’t fall on it. They change the altar clothes once a month, and the one they’re using right now is pale blue brocade with a swirling golden pattern of waves. He takes off his house slippers and kneels, reaching for the matches. He makes a face at the scratch/itch noise the match makes on the box, lights the candle, and blows the match out. The burning candle smell is much nicer than the burning match smell. Less burnt/black. He picks up the incense and lights it from the candle, sticking it into the incense holder and feeling the give of the grit that isn’t dirt in the holder. The incense has a mild scent, but it’s still strong enough to make his nose wrinkle. Not a bad smell, just, sharp. Like the way a pickle a tastes but in your nose. Technically, Yuugi’s supposed to hit the bell before he prays, but when he’s doing it by himself he doesn’t because everything is already smelly without it also being loud. He exhales, says the chant, folds his hands, and bows his head. 

He quickly mentally thanks his mom and grandmother for him not dying, because Jii-chan will ask if he did and he’s never figured out how to lie to Jii-chan, but he also repeats that it would be much easier, if they were involved in this, to prevent him from wandering into active crime scenes in the first place. He doesn’t hear anything back, which, he never does, but his understanding about praying to the dead was that it was like writing a letter, not talking on the phone. You didn’t really want a response, and if you got one, especially a loud one, it was a sign something was probably gonna go very wrong and you might need to get a priest or nun involved. Thanking his mom and grandmother finished, he’s supposed to hit the bell before he blows the candle out. Since he didn't hit the bell in the first place and hitting it just once wouldn’t create a closed loop, he just blows the candle out. The incense was the short kind that only burned for about ten minutes, but Yuugi always kind of worries about things catching on fire, so he prefers to sit at the butsudan until it’s low enough it feels safe to leave unattended. 

He looks at the photo of his mom. The one they use for the butsudan was taken a few months before she died. She’s smiling and looking at something to the left of the frame. Yuugi knows they’re supposed to keep ihai in the butsudan, not photos, but Jii-chan says it’s easier to remember his mom and grandmother when you can see images and not just their names. He doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to remember his mom when she died before he was a year old but it is easier to think about her as a person when he can see a picture. They both have Jii-chan’s eyes. Otherwise they don’t really look alike. Yuugi wonders if he looks more like his father or if he doesn’t look like anyone in his immediate family. Listening to Izuku talk about quirks and quirk inheritance has taught him that genetics are weird. Human genetics, especially human genetics after quirks, are much more complicated than those of pea plants. 

He has a game about genetics in his game bag he keeps meaning to show Izuku. Maybe on Sunday? He’s gotten a little taller and his game bag’s easier to carry now than when he was younger, but he doesn’t carry as many games with him when he goes out as he used to. He’s a little sad about that, really; he still worries about not having the right kind of game with him if he runs into someone that might want to play. But Izuku is always willing to play games with him, even if he doesn’t like the game. And the more Izuku keeps playing with him, the less anxious he feels about not having the right games. Still, going hero watching with Izuku means he needs to bring his game bag and he probably should go through it again, to see if he wants to add or remove or change the games. 

The incense is low enough he won’t worry about it catching something on fire. Yuugi carefully closes the butsudan, moves his feet to put his slippers back on, and picks up the rice and apple to bring them into the kitchen. He puts the rice in a container for breakfast tomorrow and puts it along with the apple back into the fridge, leaving the bowls on the counter. He heads to the stairs, checks the incense has gone out, and goes upstairs. “I’m done!” 

“Did you thank them and close the butsudan?” Jii-chan asks, voice slightly muffled. The door to his room is mostly closed. 

“Yeah, and the incense is out!” 

“Offerings in the fridge?”

“Yeah!” It didn’t matter that much with rice or apples, but if the fruit was grapes or Jii-chan was having him leave out some of his mom or grandmother’s favorite cooked foods then it wasn’t safe to eat the food if Yuugi forgot and left it out overnight. 

Jii-chan makes a grunt that sounds vaguely positive. “You need to get ready for bed in an hour.” 

“Okay,” Yuugi says, and heads into his room. He wants to play chess for a while. Against the computer, not online, he doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone. Between trying to avoid Tokage and things being on fire it’s been a really long day. He’s planning on spending most of tomorrow at home and avoiding loud noises or light so he can enjoy playing with Izuku on Sunday instead of spending the entire time feeling like he’s about to start crying. Hopefully he and Izuku won’t run into anything on Sunday. 

…Sunday evening Yuugi has to pray at the butsudan again, but Izuku got a new autograph from a hero Yuugi had never heard of and they hadn’t run into Bakugou or his friends. Yuugi decides to count the weekend as a win. 

______________________________________________________________________________________

On Monday Tokage-kun appears at Yuugi’s desk before class starts. He’s doing something weird with his face. “You’re here,” says Tokage-kun. 

Yuugi looks down at himself to check. “Yes?” he tries, when Tokage-kun doesn’t say anything else. 

Tokage-kun’s face keeps doing the thing. “Recess,” he says finally. “Talk to me. Or else.” He stalks off back to his desk. Yuugi stares after him, confused. He looks back at himself. There’s nothing on his shirt. Also no lizards. He then checks through his desk and bag. No lizards there either. 

Tokage-kun keeps staring at Yuugi throughout class when Chouno-sensei isn’t paying attention. Staring, not glaring. It’s still intense but it feels less prickly. Yuugi tries to be quiet about it but keeps needing to check his bag for lizards. After the third time, Chouno-sensei gets annoyed and her face starts to drip and she makes Yuugi bring his bag up front. She takes out two interesting rocks and one of his Rubik’s cubes and tells him she’s ‘confiscating the contraband.’ She does that a lot with him. It means he’s not getting them back, which. He’d liked those rocks. 

At recess, Yuugi makes it outside with the rest of their class before Tokage-kun looms next to him again. “Come with me,” he says. 

“Not the bathroom,” says Yuugi plaintively. He hasn’t gotten cornered in the bathroom since first grade but being there with other students still stresses him out. 

Also? Smelly. 

“Fine,” says Tokage-kun, reaching towards Yuugi. Yuugi flinches and Tokage-kun stops and pulls his hand back. Yuugi stares at him warily. After a minute Tokage-kun rolls his eyes. “I’m not grabbing your hair.” 

Yuugi crosses his arms and glowers. “You did last time.” Because he DID.

“Your hair sticks up like a foot from your head, of course I grabbed it,” said Tokage-kun. “Let’s go to the dead earth.” He points towards it with a motion that’s overly slow, like he’s dancing or his arm hurts. Yuugi thinks it’s to make fun of him but doesn’t care. The area he’s pointing to is by the edge of the playground. Everyone tells everyone that a kid with a fire-puking quirk got sick and vomited all over there, so now nothing grows and the dirt always looks sort of burned. Yuugi also heard a version where it was an acid-puking quirk. Special acid, not regular acid the way everyone did. Yuugi trudges behind Tokage-kun, dragging his feet a little in the dirt and seeing how it changes their footprints. It’s not like he has anything else to do. His classmates and other students play with him more than they used to but it’s not like with Izuku, and Chouno-sensei’s not going to give his Rubik’s cube back. 

“Mutou-kun,” says Tokage-kun once they’re at the dead earth. “On Friday-“

“Yuugi,” says Yuugi, because if they’re going to keep talking Yuugi wants him to use his name.

Tokage-kun makes a face. “You’re not calling me by my given name, we aren’t friends.”

“I don’t want to?” says Yuugi, because he doesn’t. Izuku’s the only one he wants to call by their given name. “But I’m Yuugi.”

Tokage-kun’s looks like he bit a pickle without warning. He looks like that a lot. “Okay. Fine.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re… so on Friday. You were near an explosion.” 

“Is the lizard okay?” Yuugi asks quickly, before Tokage-kun can tell him to stop talking about lizards. “Or are you gonna start yelling at me that that isn’t your quirk? Because that lizard was really close to the fire and I want to know if it’s okay, so maybe, can you let me know, and then I’ll stop asking lizard questions?” 

“What does lizard questions even-“ Tokage-kun makes another face. “Look, my point is, there was a fire, and you were near it.” 

Yuugi waits for a moment to see if Tokage-kun is going to say anything else, lizard related or not. “Yes?” he tries. 

“She didn’t see what happened other than that there was a fire, and the news outlets are notoriously bad with reporting civilian injuries at hero-related incidents, and anyway, my point is-“ Tokage-kun stops talking. Yuugi waits. Tokage-kun continues to do weird things with his face and not say anything. 

Yuugi has no idea what’s going on and doesn’t want to spend all of recess in the dead earth with Tokage-kun, so he tries to continue the conversation. “Fires happen around me a lot,” said Yuugi, because they did. “That one was actually pretty safe. Didn’t get the houses next to it, but they’re probably going to have some smoke and water damage they have to repair.”

“Why are fires happening around- nevermind, that’s not the point,” says Tokage-kun. 

Yuugi waits, AGAIN, to see if Tokage-kun is going to say the point. He keeps doing face things and not saying the point. So Yuugi goes back to HIS original point. “So, the lizard was okay?”

Tokage-kun makes a sound like something’s stuck in his throat. “Yes, she was fine, but the point-“

“How do you tell she’s a she?” Lizards and amphibians did gender differently than humans, Yuugi knows. Some types of frogs can even change their gender at will. He’s not sure how that works but it sounds like it would be really useful at the train station when the men’s bathroom is closed but the women’s is open. 

Tokage-kun’s voice switches from annoyed to lecture mode, the way he does when he’s answering a question in class and the way Izuku does when he’s explaining hero stats to Yuugi. “The males are more likely to have gray tails as adults, not blue. And during mating season the males get orangish blotches near their snout and jaws. But when they’re young or when it isn’t mating season it’s actually pretty hard to tell the males from the females-“ Tokage-kun stops talking and glares at him. “Look. Stop changing the subject.” 

“I’m not changing the subject,” says Yuugi. Like. You were ALLOWED to bring up different things in conversations when the other person or people stopped talking about the previous thing or went quiet. And people liked it when the different things you brought up were related to the previous ones. “There was a fire. I was near it. The lizard that was near it is okay. Those are related.”

Tokage-kun covers his face with his hands and growls. Yuugi has no idea what’s going on and wonders if he should leave while Tokage-kun isn’t paying attention, but they are still in the same class, and Tokage-kun might still get lizards to show up at his desk or bag again, and Chonou-sensei hadn’t confiscated all of his stuff but she was always looking for a reason to and this was all dumb and complicated and he kind of just wanted to go play on the swings. Or the sandbox, if the swings were full. Yuugi liked sand. If you looked at the grains under a microscope there were all these tiny fossils or pieces of shells. And the texture was nice, as long as it didn’t get in your socks. 

Tokage-kun throws his hands up and Yuugi tenses. Too late to run. “Look, forget the fire, whatever, who cares.” Tokage-kun takes a deep breath and reaches into his pocket and then sticks his hand out. “I have something for you.”

Yuugi feels his eyes go wide. It’s a brass colored infinity cube. Like the ones Chonou-sensei lost. He stares up at Tokage-kun. Tokage-kun gestures with the hand holding the cube. “You can have it.” 

Yuugi picks it up. He flips it around, rolls it from hand to hand. The weight is perfect and heavy and cool and it moves just the right way, like the ones he lost had, and Yuugi stops paying attention to anything else but moving the cube for a little bit. 

He loves it. Yuugi feels really happy and he shifts the cube to his right hand as his left hand starts moving. He looks up and beams at Tokage. “Thank you!”

Tokage starts back, like something’s just surprised him. He stops looking annoyed and his glaring turns into to staring. “You’re welcome,” Tokage says, slowly. He keeps staring at Yuugi, like he’s confused about something. “You can keep it, as long as you don’t tell anyone what we were talking about.” 

“…What were we talking about?” asks Yuugi urgently, as his left hand stops moving. Because they haven’t talked about a lot of things, but they’ve talked about more than one, and Yuugi might have forgotten or zoned out about a different thing, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to know which thing Tokage means. 

Tokage shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it, then suddenly starts glaring at Yuugi again. “What do you mean- lizards! You’re the one who keeps saying they have to do with my quirk. Stop talking about that, don’t tell anyone about it, and you can keep the cube.” 

Right. The lizard thing. That makes sense. “Um,” says Yuugi. Because he doesn’t like to lie, and he’s really bad at it, but he also doesn’t want to give the infinity cube back. 

Tokage closes his eyes. “You told someone already.”

Yuugi squirms. “Yeah.” He hadn’t known he shouldn’t? Like. He hadn’t told any of the teachers, but Izuku didn’t even go to the school and Jii-chan was Jii-chan. Why would that matter? 

Tokage opens his eyes and glares at Yuugi. “Was it Masaki?” 

Yuugi blinks. Masaki Anzu sits near the front of the class and has been in all of Yuugi’s classes since preschool. She was really kind but had once punched a kid for pulling his hair back in first grade, and kicked a different kid for making the music teacher cry back in second grade, so she was also REALLY scary. She has an amazing quirk where she makes light when she moves. Yuugi likes trying to watch her in P.E. or at recess because sometimes she accidentally activates her quirk and then there’s a bunch of colours swirling around her. He’s not sure why Tokage would think Yuugi would talk to her about Tokage though. “No?” says Yuugi. “I told Izuku and Jii-chan.” 

Tokage’s face scrunches, like he’s thinking very hard. “…Who’s Izuku?” he asks after a minute. “He’s not one of our classmates- is he in another class?” 

“Kind of?” says Yuugi. “He goes to Jurano Elementary.” 

Tokage frowns. “Where’s that?” 

“Over in Musutafu.” 

Tokage exhales. “Okay. Fine. You can keep the cube as long as you don’t tell anyone ELSE about it. Can you do that?” 

“As long as no one asks me directly,” says Yuugi, because he does really like the cube and wants to be honest. 

Tokage glowers at him. “Why are you making this so complicated? Why did you even have to tell anyone about it?” 

“…Lizards don’t show up in Izuku’s classroom all the time so he asked, and Jii-chan asked about the lizards when we were playing chess,” says Yuugi. He’s not trying to be difficult. He feels the cube in his hand, hard and metal and moving. Infinity cubes are made to keep moving. There’s no point in the movement that has to be an end or a beginning, they just are. It’s comforting. 

“…You play chess?” You know what chess is, Tokage’s tone is saying. Yuugi recognizes that tone from new people at the game store. People who are regulars don’t ask him like that. 

Yuugi nods, shifting the cube from his right hand to his left. “Jii-chan taught me how after the New Year. I play with him and online.” 

There’s a long pause. “Okay, new deal,” says Tokage. “You can keep the cube if you don’t tell anyone else, and if you play chess with me. You’re not a total idiot so you might actually be a challenge.” 

Yuugi looks around the dead earth. There’s no chessboard anywhere. “…Now?” 

Tokage snorts. “No, after class.” 

“I can’t, I’m meeting up with a friend,” says Yuugi, because he is, and he already had to cancel on Izuku on Friday. “Maybe tomorrow?” 

Tokage snorts again. “You can play me before you meet up with your friend, you’ve been playing for less than a year and I play on a professional level. It’s not going to take long.” 

Yuugi feels himself frowning. He hasn’t been playing that long but he’s beaten Jii-chan, and he’s beaten other people online, he doesn’t suck at chess just because he’s new. “You have a chess board?” 

“There’s one in classroom 4-B, the teacher lets me borrow it. Meet me there after class.” 

Yuugi wants to protest, because it’s not that he doesn’t want to play chess, especially since Tokage is making it sound like he sucks at it, but he doesn’t want to be late with Izuku, and not having cellphones means it’s that much harder to check in if they think something’s wrong, and Izuku will worry if Yuugi’s late especially after Friday, but before he can say anything the teacher is blowing the whistle (easily his sixth least favorite noise) and recess is over and Tokage is heading back. 

Yuugi leaves the dead earth and lines up with everyone before the teacher can yell at him for being late. He didn’t get to go to the swings or the sandbox, or to the bathroom, which he realizes he kind of needs to do, but he DID get an infinity cube. And a new chess partner? And if Tokage is playing chess with him after class and has given him the cube for not talking about lizard things Yuugi can probably stop checking his bag for the rest of the day to see if there’s a lizard in it, so Chouno-sensei can’t take more stuff from his bag for checking it for lizards. He fiddles with the infinity cube. Now he just has to figure out how to be still enough so Chouno-sensei can’t take this cube like the other ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Butsudans are in a lot of Japanese households and there's numerous schools of thought over how you pray at them/set them up/leave offerings, especially depending on the type of Buddhism you follow and how religious you are. But there is also a lot of personal interpretation- the website I saw talking about how you didn't leave photos in the butsudan was immediately followed up by people talking about leaving photos there. And yes, in Japan you generally eat the offerings at a Butsudan and don't let them go to waste- the logistics of who gets offerings you leave at a temple is actually fairly complicated and I think kind of fascinating. Anyway, I just liked the idea that Sugoroku has a certain point where he just goes "I'm going to request divine intervention on this" and deals with his grandchild being a trouble magnet by having him pray to his mom and grandmother. 
> 
> Yes, Endeavour was fighting a villain named "Dialectic." Aka a type of discourse resolved through reasoned arguments. Like fireballing your opponent into a house. 
> 
> Anzu is going to be an AMAZING dancer with her quirk. 
> 
> I changed two small details in the first chapter. The first is that Yuugi and Izuku are eight when they meet; I kept waffling between eight and nine, but I think eight works better. If they feel more like nine year olds, feel free to go with that. The second detail was to change a background character's gender. 
> 
> It turns out someone who is bad at conveying emotion talking to someone who has a hard time telling when people are having certain emotions results in a lot of awkward dialogue. Who knew? 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and to everyone who reviewed or kudosed this fic!


	4. Pawn Structure and King Safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuugi learns how to be more obsessed with a game and how to find other people even more obsessed than him, if they don't find him first. His homeroom teacher continues to be a jerk, and other people notice.

Tokage wins. It takes less than eight minutes, which Yuugi knows because Tokage pulled out his phone to set up a timer when they started. He’s frowning. “You don’t actually suck at this.” 

That’s… not what Yuugi thought he’d say. He tightens his hand around the infinity cube. He’d wanted to win. He’d REALLY wanted to win, and had kind of hoped Tokage would actually suck at chess or have confused it with checkers or shougi. But playing Tokage had been unlike playing Jii-chan or anyone else he’d played online. It had felt kind of like when he was playing the computer. Like Tokage was thinking and reacting to how Yuugi was going to think and react before Yuugi even knew. Playing from a whole different level. 

“Reset the board and play me again,” says Tokage. 

“You won,” says Yuugi, confused. He’d gotten Yuugi into check three times and Yuugi hadn’t even managed to get him into it ONCE. 

Tokage rolls his eyes. “Yes, I know, I was there. Play me again.” 

Yuugi resets the board. The pieces are a cheap plastic that doesn’t feel very good to his fingers. “Am I white again?”

“Sure, whatever,” says Tokage, staring at the board. “Just hurry up.” 

Tokage wins again. It takes over eight minutes this time. “Hm,” says Tokage. “Okay. New deal.” 

“…what deal?” asks Yuugi, frowning as he tries to track where Tokage’s checkmate had started. He’d noticed Tokage setting up his rook and queen, he hadn’t noticed the bishop. That was really smart. He kind of wished they had been playing on the computer, the computer had to have a setting that let you save a game so you could review the moves. 

“The deal where I give you the infinity cube, the one you are literally holding in your hand right now and have been since we started, what else would I be talking about?” 

Yuugi moves the hand playing with the infinity cube closer to his chest. “You already changed that deal. And if you keep changing it I’m not going to remember what any of the terms are,” says Yuugi, because he won’t. Also the longer he has the infinity cube the more it’s his and he hates fighting but he is very good at running away from people trying to grab things from him, and Tokage doesn’t look like he’s very good at that kind of running. Walking angrily towards things, yes, running, no. Unless he has siblings. “Do you have siblings?” 

Tokage makes an annoyed sound. “I have a younger brother, and talking with him is like talking with you because he also changes the subject every thirty seconds, even without the snakes.” 

Yuugi looks up from the board, confused. “Snakes?” 

“There’s- Mutou- Okay.” Tokage makes a face like he’s biting on an umeboshi. “Yuugi. Stop changing the subject. You can keep the infinity cube if you don’t talk about me, lizards, or quirks with anyone else, and if you meet up with me after class to play chess.” 

Yuugi stares at the infinity cube. It’s the perfect colour and the perfect weight and moves just right, but. “…So I can’t talk about lizards or quirks with ANYONE?” That’s different than what Tokage had said earlier. Yuugi doesn’t talk about lizards a lot except because of them showing up in class but he wants to be ABLE to talk about them, and quirks are Izuku’s special interest the way games are Yuugi’s, the cube isn’t worth not being able to talk with his best friend. 

“Are you-“ Tokage does a very long, very deep exhale. “Look, do you want to play me again or not?” 

“Not if you’re going to keep being a jerk about me not understanding things,” says Yuugi, because he doesn’t. Playing chess with Tokage was really cool even if he doesn’t understand how he won, but he’d rather spend time with Izuku not playing chess than play chess with Tokage being a jerk. “I do want to know how you did the thing with your bishop though.” 

Tokage switches from staring back to glaring. “I’ll stop being a jerk when everyone around me stops being an idiot, and google bishop and endgame to look for similar strategies. Look, I don’t care if you talk about lizards or quirks, I don’t want you to talk to anyone else about my quirk having to do with lizards, because it doesn’t, which is the whole point!” 

Yuugi notices a flash of blue and turns his head. There’s a blue tailed lizard (okay five striped skink, but blue tailed lizard is just a better name, and he still doesn’t get the difference between a lizard and a skink) that’s crawled next to Tokage’s side of the chess board. Tokage looks down and makes an incoherent sound of frustration, kind of like the one Yuugi made yesterday when he’d realized he and Izuku had wandered into an active crime scene. “Oh will you KNOCK IT OFF,” snarls Tokage. The lizard does not knock it off, whatever that might mean to a lizard, or move from next to the chessboard. It sort of looks smug, though Yuugi’s not really sure why he thinks that. Reptilian body language is weird. Even birds are easier to read than lizards, though most of what birds seem to be saying is “you are/aren’t trying to steal my food”, “you are/aren’t going to feed me”, and “I am waiting for you to drop that so I can eat it, maybe I should try flying at your face to expedite the process.” He doesn’t like feeding ducks at the park anymore.

Yuugi looks up at the clock. He really needs to leave if he doesn’t want Izuku to be worried, or if he doesn’t want to have to leave almost as soon as he gets there. “Do you want to deal with that, and we can do this again tomorrow? I guess?” 

Tokage moves his glare from the lizard back to him. “Okay. Yuugi. Don’t talk about lizards being my quirk to anyone at school, play chess with me after school at the same time for the rest of the week, and you can keep the infinity cube. Deal?” 

“…deal but like. You don’t have to bribe me to play chess with you.” Yuugi usually has to bribe OTHER people to play games with him, the reversal’s kind of weird. 

Tokage’s eyes narrow. “Just don’t talk about me having a lizard quirk with anyone.” He holds his hand out to the lizard, which crawls smoothly up onto his hand and runs up his arm to climb somewhere under his jacket. He stands up. “Put the chessboard back,” he orders, and stalks out of the room. His jacket swishes behind him dramatically. It seems kind of large for him. 

Yuugi picks up the chessboard with the bad feeling plastic pieces and puts it away so he can leave before he gets in trouble for being in the wrong classroom. He checks his backpack before he puts it on – no lizards- and hurries out. 

________

He’s out of breath by the time he gets to Izuku’s place. He jams his feet into the All-Might house slippers he uses when he visits, wheezes out a hello to Midoriya-san and stumbles towards Izuku’s room. “Yuugi, sorry to stop you when you’re in such a rush, but your grandfather called,” says Midoriya-san. She sounds amused. “Something came up with the store inventory and he wants you to have dinner here tonight. He’ll pick you up around nine.” 

Yuugi hesitates, because Midoriya-san is a good cook, but. “…what are you making?” 

“Okonomiyaki. I won’t put any squid on yours, and no, there’s no onions or shallots in it.” 

Yuugi wants to like squid and octopus but the texture’s just weird. Same with shrimp. Also intestine. Also cuttlefish. And onions and shallots are gross but in a different way. People usually don’t put them in okonomiyaki but Yuugi has learned it’s important to check. “Okay, thanks!” He pauses. “Uh, did he say anything else?” 

“Ah, he said to tell you he’ll set up the gameboard for later,” says Midoriya-san. That’s the code phrase Jii-chan uses when he changes plans so Yuugi knows it’s coming from him and everything’s okay, and while by this point Midoriya-san probably knows that and could pretend to be relaying information from him it seems really unlikely she’s planning on kidnapping or murdering or selling him off to villains. It’d make Izuku sad and she gets sad when he’s sad. He continues to Izuku’s room, bangs on the door, and opens it to meet the usual All Might explosion. Izuku’s working on something at his desk. He lights up when he sees Yuugi. “Hey, wasn’t sure you hadn’t run into something else exploding or catching on fire, Endeavour’s going to be back in Koriban today or tomorrow!” 

“Nothing exploded or caught on fire, please stop saying things around me keep exploding and catching on fire, I don’t want to see the fire hero again and sorry I’m late,” says Yuugi, flopping onto the floor by his desk. “Today’s been really weird.”

He explains. It takes a while. “…and then Tokage said he wanted to play chess with me again, picked up the lizard, and left,” he finishes. He’s been fiddling with the infinity cube for most of this. “I guess the lizard was hanging out inside his jacket? Maybe that’s why he wears them so big. He said he has a sibling but it’s a younger brother not older so the jacket’s probably not a hand-me-down? Unless maybe it’s from a cousin or something. But it also looked pretty new, just big.” 

Izuku’s frowning. He’s still at his desk. He’s been quiet for most of Yuugi’s explanation. “Tokage?” says Izuku finally. “Not Tokage-kun?” 

Yuugi focuses on switching the cube between his hands. His face feels warm. 

There’s a long pause. Izuku groans. “Yuugi, he didn’t give you that to be nice or make friends, it’s a bribe!”

“But it’s a really NICE bribe,” says Yuugi plaintively, because it IS.”I mean, LOOK AT IT.” He waves the cube around Izuku’s general area to make his point. “And he wants to play chess with me!” 

Izuku waves his hands around in the air. “People giving you stuff after threatening you and then telling you it’s a bribe to keep you quiet and then threatening you into playing chess with them isn’t something that should make you feel familiar with a person! That’s not good! That’s like, the stuff villains do!” 

“I’ve interacted with a LOT of villains and NONE of them have ever given me an infinity cube or made me want to use informal speech on them,” says Yuugi. “I mean the Yakuza keep giving me extra pachinko tokens but that doesn’t feel like a bribe, I think they feel sorry for me since I keep showing up when they’re fighting.” He frowns. “Also I’m not sure they count as villains?” Yakuza are usually breaking the law in some way or another but a lot of people break the law, and not everyone who breaks the law is a villain. Like how not all lizards are skinks. Namagomi-san keeps sneaking her wet garbage into the burning garbage on burn garbage pickup days in his neighborhood but she’s not a villain, just bad at sorting trash. 

“You need to stop going to pachinko parlours in Koriban or Mosepusa!” says Izuku. “I don’t care if they give you free pachinko tokens they’re like, doing bad stuff, and dangerous stuff!” 

Izuku has a point, and he KNOWS he has a point, but. “The pachinko parlours in Musutafu have different machines and they play weird, I don’t like them.” 

“Yes, but you’ve never been caught in a villain attack or a Yakuza battle or a firefight at a pachinko parlour in Musutafu.” Izuku pauses. “I mean, you haven’t, right?” 

Yuugi thinks about this for a while. “No?” he tries. 

Izuku groans and flops forward in his chair so his head’s on his desk. “How do you even FIND all that stuff?” he says, voice muffled. “You keep saying you don’t have a probability quirk but-“ 

“If I have a probability quirk it’s NOT a trouble magnet quirk!” Yuugi would rather be quirkless than have that quirk, especially since it seems like even if he WAS quirkless no one would believe him about it anyway. Also people already think he’s weird or broken, it wouldn’t be the same thing to him it is for Izuku. 

“Well I mean, your grandpa and your grandma and your mom all had probability quirks even if none of them involved finding trouble specifically, and I mean, your mom’s quirk was about finding weak points or points where things would break,” mumbles Izuku from the desk. “Finding a disaster or danger isn’t that weird a mutation.” 

“And all of them had an emitter quirk, and I know Jii-chan and mom had the same activation, and my eyes don’t turn red, and I’m not LOOKING for trouble.” 

“Well not all emitters have visible activations, and maybe by this point it’s a mutation where you don’t have a conscious activation -“ 

Yuugi interrupts him because if he doesn’t Izuku will KEEP GOING. “ANYWAY it’s just his last name. I don’t want to call Tokage by his given name or anything.” 

Izuku raises his head and stares at Yuugi. “Yuugi, I’m the only person you call by their given name!”

Yuugi blinks. “Well, yeah.” 

Izuku stares at him before turning bright red. It is really sad he blushes so easy when his hair’s green, it always looks kind of weird. Yuugi keeps playing with the infinity cube. He wants to pull out his remaining Rubik’s cube but he should probably start on his homework, or look over the homework he got back to try and figure out why things got marked wrong. 

“…why is the fire guy going to be back in Koriban?” he says instead. “You said he was only here because of… Dialect?”

Izuku’s still kind of red but makes an annoyed sigh. “He’s the number 2 hero and has been for almost as long as All Might’s been number 1, there’s no way you don’t know his name. And Dialectic. And yeah, he was here because of Dialectic but Syllogism attacked a shopping arcade earlier today over in Koriban and Syllogism works a lot with Dialectic, so Endeavour will probably be back.” 

“Great,” says Yuugi with the same level of enthusiasm he feels during gym class when the teacher says the students are going to pick teams. 

“Why don’t you like Endeavour?” asks Izuku. “Like, I’m sorry he threw someone into a building next to you but that, uh, that’s not the first time that’s happened to you, and Dialectic was a really bad villain. He would have kept hurting people if Endeavour didn’t stop him.” 

“He’s scary and he’s ON FIRE and his costume is so DUMB,” mutters Yuugi, because all of those statements are true. “Why would you want to be on fire?” 

Izuku groans. “I keep TELLING you, there’s a lot of science and engineering that go into hero costume designs, and like, his costume is designed to work with his quirk. And like, he might seem scary and I know he has a really different vibe than All Might- All Might’s always smiling and he’s there to reassure everyone and let them know things will be okay but Endeavour’s not about smiling, he’s about…” Izuku frowns. 

“Punching people and fireballing them into houses and threatening lizards.”

“It’s more of an offensive focus,” says Izuku. “Like, he’ll get rid of a threat, and villains need to think twice before fighting him, but it’s a really different kind of safe than All Might. People are safe because villains are scared of Endeavour, not because Endeavour makes them feel safe. I think that’s probably why he’s never going to be better than All Might. All Might isn’t just the strongest, he’s the best at making people feel safe. That’s why he’s the Hero of Peace and Endeavour’s the Flame Hero.”

Yuugi thinks about flames, and fire, and freezes. “Izuku,” says Yuugi, urgently, because this is important. “IZUKU. What happens when he farts in his costume?” 

Izuku starts making wheezing sounds from his chair. “Yuugi-“

“No, seriously!” interrupts Yuugi. “Farts are like, methane and hydrogen, which are flammable, and his costume is MADE OF FIRE. What happens when he farts?”

“Parts of his costume are on fire, not ALL of his costume, and not the parts over his butt!” yells Izuku. 

“But there’s fire NEAR his butt! And like farts are made of air, and air floats, and what happens when the fart floats up to the fire?” Another thought hits him. He shouldn’t say it. He shouldn’t. But. “…Does Bakugou set his farts on fire?”

Izuku makes a noise like the time he tripped over one of the cats his neighbor Tanaka-ba raises. “YUUGI YOU CAN’T JUST SAY THAT!” wails Izuku. “I have to see him in class tomorrow!” 

“He sweats nitroglycerin and makes explosions! And he farts like everyone else. What if it’s hot and his butt sweat gets set off and then he farts? Do toilets at your school like, keep breaking whenever it gets hot out and he’s in the bathroom?” 

“That is NOT how his quirk works! He has nitroglycerin HAND sweat, not nitroglycerin BUTT sweat!” 

“Well like, he wipes his butt with his hands!” argues Yuugi. “You wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, not before, maybe some of his nitroglycerin sweat gets on his butt so his farts COULD catch on fire!” 

“Why are you doing this,” says Izuku in a voice like someone had told him he had to destroy all his All Might merch. “Next time I see him all I’m going to think about is farts. I’m going to see him go to the bathroom and all I’m going to think about is exploding farts.”

“…well he is a fart.” 

“YUUGI!” Izuku grabs a pillow from his bed and throws it at him, and he throws it back, and then Izuku launches himself at him and some of the All-Might merchandise gets knocked over and finally Midoriya-san has to knock on the door and tell them to keep it down, but Yuugi managed to sit on top of Izuku without being unseated for a whole ten seconds so he considers it a win. 

 _____________ 

The thing with Tokage actually works out pretty well. They meet up after class, play two or three games of chess in the empty classroom with the borrowed chess set, and leave before anyone catches them. Tokage always wins but Tokage also keeps giving him chess info to look up online, and it’s AMAZING. There’s thousands of pages of people talking about the best ways to play chess. People have ongoing, furious arguments about whether it’s better to open with 1.e4, 1.c4, 1.d4, or 1.Nf3; whether white is superior to black; when different pieces should enter into play. He keeps staying up too late to read things and being really tired in class and Chonou-sensei keeps calling on him when he isn’t paying attention but he doesn’t care, he’s never known that you could think about a game like this. He keeps talking about it with Jii-chan and Izuku and he knows he’s babbling and hyperfocusing but it’s just. So. COOL. 

Jii-chan also makes a new household rule that the internet gets turned off at 9pm, which is dumb and unfair and stupid, but Yuugi will admit (as long as Jii-chan can’t hear him) probably a good idea if Yuugi wants to get more than five hours of sleep a night for the rest of the year. Or it’s something that will give him a lot of practice at opening tabs and loading pages before the internet gets cut. 

On Friday Tokage changes the deal again so Yuugi has to keep playing him next week or he’ll take the infinity cube back. Yuugi tries to pretend he’s surprised and upset but doesn’t think Tokage believes him. Whatever. He’s not going to STOP playing Tokage, but Tokage is definitely not getting the cube back from him, ever. And it’s also kind of nice, because it means Tokage’s enjoying playing him, even though Yuugi’s pretty sure Tokage wouldn’t admit it under pain of villain attack. Not that he’s ever known a villain to show up and use that as a reason to attack. Though there was the one who was upset his girlfriend had left him, and the other who was mad her girlfriend was fighting with her, and the one who was mad that his boyfriend and girlfriend had left him to date each other, and that one time the villain thought her girlfriend and boyfriend were breaking up with her but actually were trying to propose and they showed up during the attack and there was a lot of crying and hugging and it was just super awkward. Dating seems very stressful. Yuugi wants to avoid it as long as possible. 

Tokage also explains how he’s done different checkmates, and starts asking Yuugi questions about where he thinks they started or what Yuugi could have done to avoid setting up a checkmate, and Yuugi can’t figure out the right language to describe things yet but he can tell the way he’s thinking about how the game is played is changing. Tokage’s still kind of a jerk but he’s not a jerk when it comes to explaining chess, or telling Yuugi where to look for more information about a play. Tokage also starts getting this look when Yuugi almost gets him in check or tries a new strategy he found online. It’s kind of like he’s happy but doesn’t want to show it so the end result is this mix between constipated and sleep deprived. As long as he doesn’t start cackling, Yuugi has decided he doesn’t care. 

Lizards show up about every other day, usually just one, sometimes two, and one time when Yuugi got Tokage in check, three. They’re always the same type and always show up near the end of or during the second game. Yuugi wonders if they’re the same lizards. Tokage himself had said it was hard to tell them apart, and Tokage had the advantage of being able to like, talk to them or however he very definitely doesn’t have conversations with them. Tokage keeps glaring at Yuugi every time one of the lizards shows up like he’s expecting Yuugi to start talking about lizards and quirks, but like, while Yuugi does keep having questions about lizards he asks he’s not Izuku. As nice as it would be to not have to keep cleaning the classroom every day, this kind of chess is WAY more interesting than quirks. 

…Izuku and Tokage probably shouldn’t meet. He feels like that wouldn’t go well. 

After about a month of playing Tokage Yuugi realizes something when he’s in his room. He stomps down the stairs and storms into the kitchen. Jii-chan’s making rolled omelets to go with dinner. Despite the fact that rolled omelets are Jii-chan’s favourite food and he’s been making them for over thirty years, he can’t make them without his quirk without ripping the eggs, so it’s one of the few times Yuugi knows what Jii-chan’s doing when his quirk’s activated. 

“You let me win!” Yuugi yells. 

Jii-chan’s eyes go from red to violet and the omelet rips. He mutters something Yuugi isn’t supposed to hear, flips the ripped egg onto a plate, and puts the skillet back on the stove. “What are you talking about, Yuugi?” 

Yuugi’s hands are clenched into fists at his side. “When I was playing you! In chess! You let me win!” 

Jii-chan looks confused, like he doesn’t understand why Yuugi’s angry. “Only when you were playing well. I could tell you were enjoying the game and didn’t want you to be discouraged.” 

“You don’t care about that with poker, why would you care about it with chess!” Yuugi yells. “How am I supposed to know if I’m any good or how I’m supposed to win if you’re letting me!” His eyes start burning and he realizes he’s crying. 

Jii-chan reaches over and turns off the stove. “Yuugi, what’s wrong?” 

Yuugi feels the crying get worse, feels his face scrunch up and his nose run and it’s gross and he hates it but he can’t stop. He doesn’t know how to explain it. Jii-chan’s supposed to know. Jii-chan’s supposed to know how much he hates it when people lie to him, and Jii-chan’s not supposed to be one of the people lying. And he can’t stop crying and he hates how it feels but it hurts even though he knows it shouldn’t be that big a deal, but it HURTS. Jii-chan’s next to him and pushing him towards the couch and he wants to fight but crying like this takes everything and he can’t do anything else. Jii-chan’s next to him on the couch as he’s rocking, and he’s rubbing circles on his back and it feels wrong but everything feels wrong right now, it’s just a smaller wrong. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s crying. He gets back to himself, little by little, and there’s gross stuff all over his face, on his mouth and chin and shirt. He hates how crying like that means spit and snot gets on everything. He’s still rocking but it’s slower. He doesn’t feel like he has to do it so fast. Jii-chan hands him some tissues and he tries to clean his chin and shirt up. The wet fabric feels gross and he can’t clean it up with the tissues so he pulls the shirt off and throws it. He blows his nose. The tissue’s doing the shredding thing so small bits of it are sticking to his hand. Jii-chan hands him more tissues and he tries to get the small bits off. 

“Can you tell me what happened?” asks Jii-chan. 

Yuugi opens his mouth to see if words can come out yet, and they do. “Don’t let me win if I’m not actually winning.” 

“Okay, I won’t.” says Jii-chan. His voice is very calm. “Is everything alright with school?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Yuugi, because he doesn’t. His throat’s sore. He lets himself rock a little faster. 

Jii-chan makes a noncommittal noise. “Okay. Do you want to tell me about the different between endgame and middlegame plays again?”

“I don’t want to talk right now.” His throat’s sore and his head feels empty and fuzzy and he still kind of feels like he’s going to cry if he thinks about anything too hard. 

“Okay,” says Jii-chan. His voice is still very calm. “Is it okay if I get up? I want to grab something and then I’ll be back.” 

Yuugi nods. His head feels like he can’t remember how to move it right. 

Jii-chan gets up. Yuugi keeps rocking on the couch, though he feels the rocking slow down again. Jii-chan comes back carrying a glass of water and the purple blanket Jii-chan bought Yuugi five years ago that has the softest texture. Yuugi wraps himself in the blanket as tight as he can and drinks the water, slowly. His left hand scrunches up the fabric of the blanket and he rubs the fabric in his hand, over and over. Jii-chan turns the tv on and sets the channel to a nature show talking about the Ryuukyuu Islands, and gets up to finish making dinner. He keeps rocking as the announcers talk about birds and hot springs but the rocking slows until it finally stops. He’s still empty and fuzzy but it’s not jagged, doesn’t feel like he’s in front of a giant chasm and if he moves wrong he’ll fall. 

“Ready to talk now?” asks Jii-chan, settling next to him on the couch. 

Yuugi huddles under the blanket. “Don't know how to,” says Yuugi, because he doesn’t. He is upset Jii-chan lied to him, even if he gets Jii-chan probably didn’t think it was a lie, and even if it wasn’t probably a big deal or about anything important. But he doesn’t get why it made him cry like that, or why thinking about talking about it makes his stomach hurt, or if Jii-chan lying to him is even why he was crying in the first place. 

Yuugi feels being autistic is the same as being short and having weird hair. Sometimes it’s annoying but mostly it’s just a thing that is. But when something like this happens, his brain stops belonging to him and he has to work really hard to understand what’s going on. And sometimes he doesn’t get an answer. Sometimes it just happens. And that part, he hates. 

“Can you tell me what happened at school?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Yuugi, because he still doesn’t, and it’s not something he really knows how to explain. 

“You don’t have to talk about it now, but if it’s making you this upset, you are going to have to talk to me about it sooner or later,” says Jii-chan. “Because I can’t help you fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong.” He sighs. “Did you have a fight with Tokage-kun?” 

“No.” 

“Everything’s okay with Izuku?” 

“Bakugou’s still a jerk but not this week. Izuku’s getting tired of chess but he showed me the new hero MMORPG. So we can play it while I talk about chess.” 

JIi-chan keeps asking him questions about the MMORPG, and some about chess. He gets him a clean shirt and they move over to the dining table. Yuugi’s holding the blanket tucked up under his arm because it is really soft, and holding onto it feels safe. He’s not hungry but he knows he’ll feel worse tomorrow if he doesn’t eat anything, so he picks at dinner until his stomach starts feeling spiky and then heads upstairs to sleep. Tonight’s not a night to stay up late and read about chess. 

He wakes up an hour earlier than usual. His stomach growls. There’s leftovers from last night in the fridge, he can probably eat those without waking Jii-chan up, especially if he eats them cold. He steps carefully past Jii-chan’s room and tries to be quiet on the stairs. As he’s heading to the kitchen he sees there’s something at his place on the table. He hurries over, still trying to be quiet. His eyes widen. 

It’s a small travel chess set, with the board made of off-white and black smooth, shiny stone. The edges are made of a dark, polished wood and when he opens the chess set there are white and black stone pieces nestled in a bright red shiny fabric. He picks up and takes out each of the pieces and they’re tiny but textured and cool and solid and so, so much better than those plastic pieces at school and he has to hold them and pool them together in his hands and feel how they interact and listen to the stone clinking sounds. 

“It was going to be for New Year’s but that’s close enough,” says Jii-chan from the kitchen. Yuugi starts- he hadn’t realized Jii-chan was awake yet- and turns and stares at him. “Might as well use it with your classmate.” 

Yuugi puts the pieces in his hands on the table (carefully!) and rushes over to Jii-chan and hugs him as hard as he can. Jii-chan hugs him back. “It’s AWESOME!” he tells Jii-chan, because it IS, and it’s the perfect size and feel and he can’t wait to use it. He feels his left hand curl into a fist and start shaking he likes it so much. 

“Good,” says Jii-chan. Yuugi holds him for another few seconds and then lets go. Jii-chan smiles at him and ruffles his hair. Yuugi doesn’t even want to know what it looks like right now, he hadn’t brushed it before he came down. “Take good care of it, I’m not going back to Bhutan until the statute of limitations expires.” 

Jii-chan makes comments like that a LOT and Yuugi long since decided he Doesn’t Want To Know. His stomach growls again. Looking in the kitchen, Yuugi can see the rolled omelet pan out and some eggs so Jii-chan’s probably going to try making them again. Yuugi should ask if he’ll make a rolled omelet for his lunchbox too; today’s one of the days he doesn’t like what his classroom is going to have for lunch so he has to make his own, and they’re always good with riceballs. 

“Also, we still need to talk about what’s wrong at school.” 

Yuugi winces and his hand stops shaking. He’d hoped Jii-chan had forgotten. It was really unlikely, but someone with a memory-removing quirk could have wandered by the house while he was asleep and accidentally activated their quirk. Or Jii-chan could have banged his head while putting the dishes away and forgotten that part of last night. Yuugi doesn’t really get head injuries but according to tv and manga they resolve a lot of problems. “There’s nothing wrong at school?” he tries. 

Jii-chan gives him an unimpressed look, sort of like how Tokage did last week when Yuugi was too distracted to play properly and the game ended in ten moves. “You’re a terrible liar and liars don’t get rolled omelets for their lunchboxes. Try again.” 

It was worth a shot, even if it means his lunch is now eggless. Yuugi considers his options. Jii-chan won’t make him talk about it before school, so breakfast this morning is safe, but there’s only so long Jii-chan will let him put it off. “Next week?”

Jii-chan continues to look unimpressed and Yuugi tries to look small and fragile. “Sunday,” Jii-chan says finally. “No later.” He starts cracking eggs into a bowl and whipping them. “Put the pieces away so you can set the table, we’re up so early we might as well have a larger breakfast.” 

Yuugi carefully picks up the pieces and sets them back into their slots, one by one. Sunday. He has until Sunday to try and figure out how to explain what’s going on without making Jii-chan upset. 

He has until Sunday to try and figure out what’s going on. 

____________

Friday he just has too much energy. He’s trying to work on a math sheet in class but keeps feeling his leg move. He tries rolling the infinity cube in his left hand but it’s no good, his leg still has to move and the more he tries to make it stay still the worse it gets. And he knows he has to be still, he knows he’s going to get in trouble but it just makes the energy spikier not smoother. And then Chonou-sensei notices. 

“Mutou-kun, since you can’t sit still something’s clearly more important to you than your education. Bring your bag and that toy up to the front.” 

Yuugi starts to get up and then freezes. The chessboard. The chessboard is at the bottom of his bag and he knows she’ll take it and he’ll never see it again. He can’t let her take it, he CAN’T, but if he doesn’t bring his bag up he’ll get in more trouble, and she’ll send him to the principal’s office and Jii-chan will get involved and it will be what happened earlier this year all over again. 

A voice breaks through his panic. “That infinity cube is mine.” 

Yuugi whips his head over to stare at Tokage. So does everyone else Yuugi can see. He’s sitting at his desk and smiling at Chonou-sensei. His smile is perfectly calm, perfectly even, and makes the skin on the back of Yuugi’s neck crawl. 

The skin around Chonou-sensei’s eyes starts to pulsate, and her eyes get larger. “Ah- what did you say, Tokage-kun?” 

“That infinity cube is mine,” repeats Tokage. “I loaned it to him.”

Chonou-sensei doesn’t seem to know how to respond. Her cheekbones keep sliding back and forth and the area around her eyes keeps going from bright to dark. “Ah, I – I see?”

“So I can have it back at the end of class?” prompts Tokage. “Since it’s mine.” 

“Ah, yes, of course,” says Chonou-sensei. The rest of her face seems to smooth out but the skin around her eyes is still moving. Yuugi decides to go for it, leaves his backpack at his desk, and hurries up to the front of the room with the infinity cube. Not having it is going to make sitting still even harder but apparently he might actually get it back? He puts it on her desk and starts to turn around to go back to his seat. “I didn’t say you could go back to your seat yet, Mutou-kun. Did you take that from Tokage-kun?” 

Yuugi thinks about every time over the past month Tokage has threatened to take the cube back if Yuugi doesn’t keep playing chess with him, or doesn’t try harder while playing chess with him. He’s pretty sure he isn’t serious and Yuugi wouldn’t give him the cube back even if he was, but Tokage still keeps SAYING it. So it’s technically still kind of his. “He let me borrow it.” 

Chonou-sensei squints at him. Or it’s her quirk. The skin around her eyes moves a lot when she’s talking to him so the size of her eyes seems to keep changing. “Did he, or did you take it?” 

His right hand tightens into a fist and shakes and he tries to hide his hand behind him so she can’t see it move. “He let me borrow it,” he repeats, his face warm. She hasn’t accused him of stealing before, and he knows he can’t show he’s upset or she’ll make him stand out in the hallway after saying he’s too unstable for her class. 

Tokage interrupts again. “I loaned it to him, he didn’t steal it.” Yuugi can’t not turn and look at him. The same smile is on his face. His eyes seem sharper. Harder. 

“I’m just trying to make sure Mutou-kun is behaving appropriately with everyone, in and out of class,” says Chonou-sensei. “But of course if you’re saying he didn’t take it, I believe you.” Her voice sounds disappointed. “Though I would expect you, of everyone, to know to take better care of your things.” 

Tokage blinks, very slowly. Yuugi thinks of the lizards. About how hard it is to tell what they’re thinking or feeling. About how they go from perfectly still to a dead run without any warning, and how obligate carnivores have very sharp teeth. “So I can have my cube back after class? I have an important extracurricular I need to get to and I want to bring it with me.” 

Chonou-sensei sighs. “See me after class, Tokage-kun. Mutou-kun, you can return to your seat. Stop distracting everyone or you can spend the rest of the class out in the hallway.” 

On the way back to his desk Yuugi sees Masaki-kun is glaring at Chonou-sensei. So are a couple other students. He sits, feels himself hunch over, and tries, somehow, to focus back on his worksheet. His right hand still needs to shake but it’s easier to hide that under his desk. His brain feels like the spinning ball that replaces the arrow when a computer’s going too slow. After trying to focus he finally just lets his eyes drift to the floor since the worksheet seems to make the spinning ball feeling worse. 

A flash of blue catches his eye. One of the blue tailed lizards is scurrying past Yuugi’s desk. It navigates around the backpacks and other desks on the floor and crawls into Tokage’s backpack. Tokage had left the flap undone; Yuugi can’t remember if it was like that before he had to get up and go to the front. 

Another lizard scurries past him. It also heads towards and into Tokage’s backpack. Yuugi straightens up and stares at the backpack, concerned. 

Then ANOTHER lizard crawls into Tokage’s backpack. He doesn’t see how this one even gets to the backpack, it doesn’t run past his desk. 

…Yuugi really doesn’t get how he’s the only person who notices this. The math worksheet isn’t THAT interesting. 

Watching for the lizards does get rid of the spinning ball feeling though, even if he doesn’t see any others for the rest of class. It gives him something else to focus on and he’s able to get a little more of the worksheet done. 

Chouno-sensei ignores him for the rest of class. When they’re cleaning the classroom he gets trash duty again but he’s gotten pretty good at avoiding the spiders by this point, even if he does kind of wish that Tokage would let him talk to him about the lizards so he could get one to come with him to the incinerator room. Maybe he could keep one in his hair? It could just hang out there and go after the spiders if they tried to drop on him. His hair has to be more comfortable than Tokage’s bag. 

Tokage isn’t in the chess classroom when he shows up, and he keeps being late. It makes Yuugi’s stomach spiky. He doesn’t know what Chonou-sensei is telling Tokage about him. He doesn’t think Tokage wants to stop playing him in chess, even if he’s not good enough to beat him yet, but Tokage probably has a bunch of people he could play who are better than Yuugi. Maybe Chonou-sensei will remind him of that, that he doesn’t have to waste his time playing Yuugi or staying after school and explaining chess to someone when he’s already been playing it for years. He doesn't have the infinity cube so he pulls out the Rubik’s cube and tries to make his brain focus on that. It does help a little, but Tokage’s still late and he keeps thinking about the way Chonou-sensei was talking to Tokage, like since Tokage’s smarter than everyone in class he has a lot better things to do than spend time with someone like Yuugi. 

Whatever happens, Yuugi has Izuku. But being with Tokage is different than being with Izuku. And he likes that difference, and if Tokage doesn't want to play with him or talk about chess anymore it’s going to make school even harder. 

Tokage shows up about forty minutes later than usual. He’s frowning. The infinity cube is in his hand and his backpack is resting on one shoulder. 

“There’s three lizards in your backpack,” Yuugi blurts out, because his mouth never is going to learn to avoid things when he’s nervous. 

“Two, one of them left,” says Tokage, still frowning. He’s not staring or glaring at Yuugi; he’s looking past him like he isn’t there. He walks over to the back desk Yuugi is sitting at and hands him the cube. “Here.” 

Yuugi puts the Rubik’s cube down and takes the cube back. “Um. Thank you for- I’ve never gotten them back. Thank you.” 

There’s a long pause. “You have that chess set in your bag, don’t you,” says Tokage. He swings his backpack down and sets it, gently, on the ground. 

Yuugi’s face is warm and he stares down at the desk. “She. Um. She doesn’t like how distracted I get in class. You know.” There’s a lump in his throat. 

“Yeah, I noticed how she likes to steal your crap after insulting you when you’re using medically approved devices to focus in her class,” says Tokage. “And keep insulting you when you then have a harder time focusing without the medically approved devices. And then write you up for getting upset about any of it.” 

Yuugi’s fingers tighten around the infinity cube. The lump in his throat feels larger. “She’s, um. It’s only a couple more months and then we change teachers again.” His chest hurts. He doesn’t want to talk about this. 

There’s a soft weight crawling up his left leg. He looks down. There’s a blue-tailed lizard perched on his left knee, staring at him. He can’t decide what expression it’s supposed to have. The lizard scurries up his leg and shirt, claws prickling lightly on his skin, and stops at the desk and stares up at him. He stares back at it. 

Tokage makes an annoyed sound and sits at the desk next to him. “Okay, that’s not working. Yuugi, when was the last time you got a higher math grade than me?”

“Why do you care,” mumbles Yuugi, staring at the lizard, “whenever I do get a higher grade you keep glaring at me and lizards show up in my desk.” They haven’t used him as a ladder before though. He thinks. 

“It’s been months since there was a lizard, not that I’d have anything to do with that, and I don’t WANT you to get a higher grade than me but I want to have to work for it. If you’re not challenging me it’s harder for me to challenge myself, and then both of us stagnate, and then we’ll be stuck going to a bad junior high school and then a bad high school and we won’t be able to get into college and we’ll wind up working at a convenience store and it will be all your fault.” 

Yuugi blinks, the tight feeling in his chest loosening a little. “You’re weird, and that doesn’t even make sense.” 

“It makes perfect sense, and you can’t call me weird, you don’t like cuttlefish,” retorts Tokage. “Look, whatever, do you have any math assignments she handed back with you?” 

Yuugi blinks again, looks up from the lizard and stares at Tokage. “Why?”

Tokage’s eyes are staring into him. His gaze is really uncomfortable, even for Yuugi. “I have a hypothesis and I want to confirm it.” 

“…By looking at my math homework?” 

“Don’t question the scientific method.” 

“I’m not questioning the scientific method, I’m questioning YOU,” says Yuugi. Tokage gets annoyed at his train of thought but Tokage’s just as bad, he just says everything more dramatically so people don’t realize it and call him out. 

“Well you shouldn’t do that either, I know everything,” says Tokage, which is the biggest lie Yuugi has heard since a villain holding a bag of money claimed she hadn’t stolen it. “Look, I’m not going to stop asking until you show me, so show me your math homework.” 

Yuugi looks back down at the lizard. The lizard looks back up at him. It seems resigned. He sighs and starts to reach for his bag. “I… didn’t do great on it,” he says quietly. 

“Even better. Give it to me.” 

Yuugi digs into his backpack (no lizards), pulls it out from the bottom and hands it to him. He tries not to look at the red sections. 

Tokage takes the paper and stares, eyes darting as he reads it. His frown widens. He turns it over. He’s still frowning. “Do you have your math tests from this year, from the past few months? Or math homework in general?”

“…Yes?” says Yuugi, confused. Most of it’s in his room. Somewhere. At least the stuff he didn’t rip up and put in the burnable garbage. 

Tokage nods and looks up from the paper to Yuugi. His eyes are burningly, brilliantly blue. “Bring it on Monday.” 

“…what?” 

“Bring it on Monday, you aren’t deaf, you heard me,” repeats Tokage. “I need more evidence.” 

“…Evidence of what? That I suck at math?” It’s one thing to know his grades, it’s another to show Tokage, who whether he does or doesn’t have an intelligence quirk is still one of the smartest people Yuugi’s ever met, just how bad he’s doing. 

“Evidence for my hypothesis. If you sucked at math I wouldn’t be playing chess with you.”

Yuugi stares back down at the lizard. It stares back up at him. “I don’t… want to?” he tries, without much hope. 

“Bring it or I won’t play chess with you anymore,” says Tokage, crossing his arms. 

Yuugi’s head jerks up and he stares at him. “But-“ 

“Yuugi, just bring it. It doesn’t matter how you did on it, I just need to see it.” He pauses. “If you were stupid, I wouldn’t be playing chess with you, or teaching you how to play chess.” 

Yuugi stares back down at the lizard. The lizard crawls onto his hand. It’s strangely light. “…Fine,” says Yuugi. “Okay.”

“Excellent. I don’t have time to play today- she just kept talking, on and on and on- and I know you have to meet up with your friend that won’t shut up about quirks. So bring your stuff on Monday, show it to me, and we’ll play chess then.” 

Yuugi doesn’t want to agree, but today has already been too long and he can tell he’s not going to win with Tokage. And honestly? He knows he’d play horribly if he had to play chess right now. “Okay.” He carefully slips his hand under the hand holding the lizard, slowly raises them up, and offers the lizard to Tokage. Tokage holds his hand out for the lizard. The lizard stares back up at Yuugi for a long moment, seems to nod, and then scurries onto Tokage’s hand and up his arm and into his jacket. 

Tokage stands up, grabs his backpack, and carefully swings it onto his shoulder. “You coming?” he asks. 

Yuugi blinks at him, then moves the Rubik’s cube into his backpack and slips the infinity cube into his pocket before grabbing his backpack and scrambling to his feet. Tokage walks in front of him. Even though there’s no one there, it feels sort of like he’s clearing the way. Tokage turns back and nods at him once they’re at the entrance, and they separate. 

So he has to talk to Jii-chan about school on Sunday and then he has to bring a bunch of papers to show Tokage how stupid he’s gotten on Monday. 

Next week hasn’t started and it already sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuugi, I promise, next week is going to go better than you think. 
> 
> This was originally going to be longer because I wanted *spoiler* to happen this chapter, but that's not going to happen for another few thousand words at least and I just wanted to get this posted. So have an extra long chapter that's on-time ish (considering I don't have a schedule) instead of waiting another few weeks. 
> 
> Meltdowns suck. They are also, sadly, a part of life with autism so you figure out how to navigate around them. 
> 
> I am very proud of the conversation between Izuku and Yuugi. Also I got to look up the chemical composition of farts, and apparently, not all farts DO contain methane in humans. Some people's intestinal flora and fauna just don't produce it and whether or not yours do is believed to have a genetic component. 
> 
> Fun fact: while writing the bits with Yuugi and his teacher I kind of wanted to make an author's note saying something to the effect of "not all autistics have bad elementary school experiences! I didn't!" and then thirty seconds later my brain went "you got bullied to the point your parents had to remove you from the school system what are you talking about". Admittedly Yuugi and I had very different experiences of bullying but this chapter wound up being much harder to write as a result. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Opening to middlegame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of emotions happen for everyone.

“You can’t give him your math homework!” says Izuku.

He’s sitting in the chair by Yuugi’s game shelf that Yuugi cleared off so it only has like, two jackets and his stuffed cat with rabbit ears Mimiko on it. Yuugi’s grabbing the papers on his desk, under his desk, in the back of his closet, being used as bookmarks, being used as chess notes, under his mattress, and under his pillow, and throwing it all on his floor. His room looks like that time someone with a paper-manipulating quirk had a sneezing fit in Tegami-san’s stationery store. He REALLY hopes Jii-chan doesn’t come in. “He said if I don’t he won’t play chess with me. Can you pull out the ones under the puzzles?" 

Izuku does not pull out the ones under the puzzles. Instead he starts waving his hands around like he’s stimming. “He’s already threatened that like eighteen million times about everything, you CAN’T give him your math homework! He’s going to do something with it!” 

Yuugi stops moving paper around and blinks at him. “Well, yeah, I mean, why else would he want it?” 

Izuku keeps moving his arms. “Something BAD! Something that will get you in trouble!” 

“He’s not gonna get me in trouble, he got me OUT of trouble, I just TOLD you!” He had JUST explained everything, hadn’t Izuku been listening? 

“Well then why didn't he say what he’s going to do with the stuff?” 

“Because he’s Tokage!” 

“That doesn’t explain ANYTHING!” yells Izuku. 

“Yes it does!” Yuugi yells back. “Tokage doesn’t like telling anyone anything about what he’s doing, ever, and why are you being a jerk about him!” He feels his eyes tearing up and his throat getting tight, and he HATES it. He doesn’t even WANT to give them to Tokage, and he has to talk to Jii-chan tomorrow, and now Izuku’s acting like a jerk about this and saying mean stuff about Tokage and all of it is just super, totally, STUPID. 

Izuku stops moving his arms, crosses them, and glares at Yuugi. “I’m not being a jerk, he’s a jerk!” 

Okay, that DOES IT. Yuugi crosses his arms back and says the worst thing for Izuku he can think of. “All Might wouldn’t say that!” 

Izuku looks like Yuugi broke one of his action figures. “All Might-“ 

Yuugi interrupts because if he focuses on Izuku’s face he will totally start crying and then Izuku will probably cry and they’ll be stuck here for hours. “All Might would not, Tokage’s my friend, same as you, and he stood up for me and he’s teaching me how to learn to play chess, and right now you’re being a butt and you need to stop because All Might would want you to stop!” 

Izuku glares at him from the chair, then looks at the floor. His face is kind of red. “…okay, I won’t call him a jerk,” he says. He looks up at Yuugi. “Do you even know what All Might’s catchphrase is?” 

Crap. “Um. Never fear, I am near?” 

Izuku groans and covers his face with his hands. “Sometimes YOU’RE a jerk.” 

“So are you,” says Yuugi, because he IS. But only sometimes. “…Sorry I brought All Might into it.” 

Izuku sighs again. “It’s okay.” He reaches under the puzzles and pulls out the stack of papers. “He did get your infinity cube back. I mean, it’s a bribe, and he keeps saying he’s going to take it back if you don't do stuff he wants, but I guess most of the time it’s stuff you want to do? I guess?” 

“Having someone bribe me to play games with them is really weird,” admits Yuugi. “Like. Super weird. And bribe me to get better at the game. I don’t think he’s very good at bribing people. Or maybe he is? Because he’s giving me stuff I want to make me keep doing things I want to do?” 

“I don't think that’s how bribing people is supposed to work,” says Izuku. He shuffles the papers. “Okay. But Yuugi. Do you WANT to give him your math homework?” 

“…No,” says Yuugi. He fiddles with the papers on the floor. “But. He said he’s not going to stop asking until I do, which I guess is kind of a jerk thing even if he’s not being a jerk, and I don’t know, maybe he can figure out why I’m doing so bad.” He’s thought a little about this. “Maybe he can tutor me, or tell me what I need to learn to improve? Like what he’s doing with chess?” 

“Your homework’s been making you super stressed since summer break ended,” says Izuku. “Like, your teacher’s a butthead but before break you were just stressed about her being a butthead, not about your grades, so I guess maybe him helping you-” Izuku stops. He brings one of paper up closer to his face. “Who graded this?” 

That was a weird question. “My homeroom teacher?” 

Izuku looks at him with a weird frown on his face, then looks back down at the papers. He shuffles through them, stops at another and stares at it. He raises his hand, puts his thumb in his mouth, and nibbles on it while he looks, muttering in a low voice Yuugi can barely make out. “Oh. Ohhhh.” He looks at another paper, nods. “Okay.” He chews on his thumb again. 

The sour/spikey feeling in his stomach is back. “Izuku, what is it?” 

Izuku keeps looking at the papers and muttering. The feeling in his stomach is worse. “Izuku?” Yuugi repeats. 

Izuku bites his thumb again. He nods. “Okay.” He lowers his hand, looks up from the papers and at Yuugi. “So. Uh. The paper you gave Tokage? Did she grade that too?” 

“…Yeah?” The feeling in his stomach is worse. 

Izuku looks back down at the papers. He’s fiddling with his hands. “Um. Have you talked to her about why your grades are down?” 

…He had. The first few times he’d noticed. He didn’t, after that. “She, um. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Izuku takes a deep breath. “Okay. Um. Alright. I think I know what Tokage wanted. So. Um.” He takes another deep breath. “So your teacher’s an asshole and you need to talk to Mutou-jii.” 

Yuugi’s brain goes blank. Izuku doesn’t swear. And he already has to talk to Jii-chan tomorrow and he doesn’t know what he’s going to say, and he doesn’t want Jii-chan to know how badly he’s been doing even if he knows Jii-chan is going to find out but he doesn’t want Jii-chan to find out from him. “Huh?” 

“She’s marking your stuff wrong when it isn’t, and you need to tell Mutou-jii, because I don’t know what to do and Tokage’s noticed it too and probably THINKS he knows what to do but he’s wrong, so you need to talk to Mutou-jii before Tokage tries to fix it because like. This is an adult problem, where you need yelling but like the right kind of yelling at the right people, and Mutou-jii is really good at yelling at people for you so you need to tell him.” 

“…But if it isn’t wrong, why would she mark it wrong?” says Yuugi, because that. That doesn’t make sense. She’s a teacher, she’s not supposed to mark things wrong if they aren’t wrong. Izuku can’t be right. Tokage can’t be right. 

…Tokage, the smartest kid in their class, wanted to look at his homework after Chonou-sensei talked to him, said it was confirming a hypothesis, and to bring the rest of his math assignments. Tokage, who told Yuugi he didn’t suck at math, that he wouldn’t play chess with someone dumb. Izuku, the second smartest person Yuugi knows after Tokage, who even if he can’t solve a Rubik’s cube or beat Yuugi in chess anymore knows how to explain quirks or people in a few sentences so that even Yuugi can understand it. 

Teachers don’t give fake grades. Yuugi knows that. But Izuku and Tokage are smart and know more about people than he does. And they’re saying teachers CAN do that. Just. Mark something wrong, when it isn’t. And like. Yuugi knew she didn’t like him, thought he was stupid and unstable and didn’t belong in her class, but he’s had teachers tell him that before, and they’d still acted like a teacher. They’d still followed the rules. He doesn’t know what it means, if Chonou-sensei isn’t following the rules. He doesn’t know how to fix that.

“Yuugi?” Izuku’s on the floor next to him. Yuugi didn’t notice him move. “Are you okay?” 

“I don’t know how to fix it,” says Yuugi. He realizes he’s crying. “I don't know how to fix that.” 

“You don’t have to fix it, she’s the one being bad,” says Izuku. He’s rubbing circles on Yuugi’s back. 

Yuugi starts rocking. “I can’t tell him.” Jii-chan had been so stressed and upset when Yuugi told him about having trouble with Chonou-sensei before summer break, and then things just got worse after Jii-chan talked to the school, and it was just a few more months, he could do this for just a few more months and then Jii-chan didn’t have to know and didn’t have to be worried because of him. 

“What she’s doing is wrong and she doesn’t get to get away with it, she doesn’t get to hurt you and not get in trouble!” says Izuku. 

Yuugi feels his words get stuck and shakes his head again. His rocking speeds up. He can’t, he can’t. 

“What are you two- what’s going on?” Jii-chan. Jii-chan’s in the room. Yuugi curls up smaller and keeps stimming. He can tell Izuku’s talking to Jii-chan but he can’t understand anything. And then Jii-chan’s standing next to him, and Izuku’s gone, and Yuugi keeps rocking. 

“Yuugi, can you get up on the bed with me? My knees aren’t what they used to be.” Jii-chan’s voice is a little further away. It’s calm, measured. 

Yuugi manages to pull himself up onto the bed and curls back up in a ball and rocks. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to talk about this. 

“Well, I guess we don’t need to talk tomorrow about what’s been bothering you at school,” says Jii-chan. His hand is on Yuugi’s back, heavy and solid, and he’s rubbing it up and down. The pressure’s soothing, firm and real. “Can you tell me more about what’s going on?” 

“No,” says Yuugi. 

“No because you don’t want to, or no because you can’t?” 

“No,” repeats Yuugi, because no. He scrunches further into a ball. 

Jii-chan sighs. “I am not angry at you. I am angry at your teacher, I am angry at your school, and I’m a little angry with myself right now, but I’m not angry with you.” 

“Don’t want you to be angry,” mutters Yuugi, staring at his comforter. It’s a bunch of purple dots in different shades, with larger red and dark yellow dots. The purple dots look almost like pixels. He likes trying to find patterns in the design; it makes him think of planets or moons with things circling around them. Dragged into orbit, escaping orbit. He focuses on one of the larger dark yellow dots. “Didn’t want you to be upset.” 

“If someone’s hurting you, I’m going to be upset. You not telling me about it because you don’t want to worry me or upset me isn’t going to change that.” Jii-chan’s trying to keep his voice calm and level, but Yuugi can feel the anger and upset underneath it, like cracks under pottery glaze. 

And Yuugi hates what Jii-chan’s saying, hates that it doesn’t matter what he does, he’s going to make Jii-chan upset and he can’t control it. His throat feels tight. “We change teachers in just a few months, and then she’s not teaching any more of my classes-“ 

“I don’t care what happens in a few months, I care what’s happening now, and I care that she’s been hurting you for the past few months and I didn’t know and you didn’t tell me!” snaps Jii-chan, and all Yuugi can feel is something jagged and sharp and wrong and he has to curl up smaller to make it stop. Jii-chan takes a deep breath. He gets up, heads over to the computer on Yuugi’s desk, and brings up an episode of an anime about a magical card game Izuku introduced him to. Yuugi likes it even though the anime’s rules about the card game are inconsistent. Jii-chan sits back next to him, rests his hand on Yuugi’s back. It’s firm and solid, grounding. Jii-chan doesn’t say anything else, just sits and watches with him. Yuugi focuses on the episode. There’s a lot of drama about whether the main character will be able to, and then does, draw six of their favourite cards in a card game tournament. Yuugi worked out the odds of them drawing the same six cards in every game like they do in the show, it’s in the billions. Which doesn’t even seem like a real number. 

“I didn’t know she was doing it,” Yuugi tells the comforter about halfway through the episode. The main character has just summoned a feathered dinosaur that looks like a technicolour emu to fight the antagonist’s non-feathered lizard monster. Maybe it’s a skink monster. Its arms are very small. “The grade thing.” 

Jii-chan exhales. “…But you’ve been having problems with her, haven’t you.” 

Yuugi’s eyes focus on a yellow and red dot on his comforter. “…Yeah.” He can’t decide if the yellow dot closest to him is a moon or a planet. There’s something called double planets, where a moon and the planet it orbits are about the same size, but he’s not sure which of the dots would orbit around which. 

“I’m not angry at you,” says Jii-chan. On the computer screen, the skink (lizard?) monster is defeated by the feathered dinosaur and dissolves into pixels. “I am angry, because you are my grandson, I love you, and someone has been treating you badly, but that anger isn’t at you. I am frustrated with you for not telling me, because I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, and I told you, after summer break, to let me know if she was bullying you again, and you didn’t.” 

Yuugi looks back at his comforter. “…you were really stressed, last time, and she stayed my teacher, and it just seemed to make her like me less.” 

“So you didn’t say anything because you thought it would make me upset, and it would just make things with her worse?” 

“…Yeah.” Things were supposed to get better after Jii-chan had gotten involved with the principal, and yeah, Yuugi got to take tests out of the room with a different teacher, but Chonou-sensei had started calling on him when he didn’t have his hand raised and checking his bag constantly and saying stuff about him whenever he asked questions and it had not been better. Not at all. 

Jii-chan sighs again. His hand is still on Yuugi’s back. “So you felt like it was no big deal, and it was better to just wait it out.” 

“It wasn’t that bad,” says Yuugi, because it wasn’t. It sucked and he hated it, but he knew he just had to wait and it would be over. Some things you just had to get through even if they hurt. Like doctor visits. Or gym class. 

“Mm. So if one of Izuku’s teachers was treating him like this, you’d tell him it wasn’t that bad? That he should just push through it?”

Yuugi uncurls, jerks up, and glares at Jii-chan. “That’s different!” 

“Why?” asks Jii-chan. “Why is it different, when it’s Izuku it’s happening to?” 

Yuugi has a lot of answers, but he doesn’t think Jii-chan would like any of them. He stares at the computer screen. His left hand curls into the comforter and he lets his hand scrunch up the fabric. “We change teachers in a few months,” he says again. 

“This is getting resolved before March,” says Jii-chan flatly. “You’re at your school because they have experience with IEPs, and any teacher there is supposed to be able to work with students who are neuroatypical or have quirks that impact their classroom experience. Your teacher was put on probation after what happened, she’s not getting to pull that shit with you.” 

…Both Izuku AND Jii-chan cursed, it’s been a weird day. “What if it just makes it worse again?” he asks. It sucks now, he really doesn’t want to know how much MORE it can suck. “What if you go in and you talk to the principal again and they say it’s not a problem, or that I’m in trouble, or that they’re going to talk to her again, and then she’s even more mad at me?” 

“Then I go yell at people until you’re in a different class or have a different teacher,” says Jii-chan. “But she’s not staying your teacher.” 

Yuugi feels his breath whoosh out of him. He has to lower his head close to his legs and just sort of focus on breathing. Jii-chan hands him some tissues, which he doesn't need because he is NOT crying again, but he takes them anyway. He feels the way his arms feel when you were holding a bag that’s too heavy for too long and finally put it down. 

When Yuugi looks back up the anime episode is over and autoplay started the next one. The main character is getting challenged to play another card game, this time WITH magical powers, not just the ability to draw whatever cards they need like Jii-chan. “Izuku said it was an adult problem that had to be fixed by yelling at people, and I should let you yell at people for me,” says Yuugi, scrunching his comforter in both hands. The main character is shuffling their cards in a really dramatically which Yuugi knows from Jii-chan usually means someone’s fixing a deck. 

“I am very good at yelling at people,” says Jii-chan. He ruffles Yuugi’s hair. “The trick is knowing who to yell at and what to yell about. You can’t just yell anything at anyone, nothing will get done.” 

Jii-chan does a kind of yelling Yuugi thinks of as constructive yelling. It’s like constructive criticism, which is the thing where you give someone information about stuff you want them to change in a way that doesn’t make the person get mad or start crying. Sometimes Jii-chan gives constructive criticism by constructive yelling, though not with Yuugi. Yuugi sort of would like to learn it, but first he has to learn how to yell or hear yelling without crying, so it’s not happening any time soon. 

“Also I’m calling your therapist and restarting sessions.” 

Yuugi jerks away from Jii-chan, because WHAT. “I already see a therapist, I don’t need to see another one!” 

JIi-chan looks unmoved. “Your occupational therapist isn’t that kind of therapist and you know it. Your teacher’s been bullying you for months, you’re seeing your therapist again.”

Yuugi glowers and kicks at the edge of the bed with his heel. “Is this because I didn’t tell you what was going on?” 

“I’d want you to see her again even if you had told me earlier, but I probably would have talked with you about whether or not you wanted to see her again,” says Jii-chan. “So it’s not a punishment, but I’m pulling the adult card. Do you want to keep watching? I want to see how they fixed their deck this time.”

Yuugi kicks at his bed again. Ow. “…Fine.”  
____________  
Jii-chan spends a lot of time on the phone on Sunday and has Yuugi go through the papers in his room. Jii-chan pulls a bunch out to show on Monday and also tells Yuugi he’s getting him a filing cabinet if he doesn't organize his homework better, which Yuugi is only a little worried about because Jii-chan’s been making that threat since Preschool. He also has Yuugi write a list of ten things that happened in class to bring up with the school, because Yuugi is NOT talking about it with Jii-chan; he had his Big Talk with Jii-chan on Saturday, Jii-chan’s not getting another one Sunday too. Jii-chan tells Yuugi it can be more or less than ten, whichever’s easiest. Yuugi writes 18 things and has to keep taking breaks to play chess on his computer. Jii-chan looks at the list and has to go to the game store for an hour. 

Instead of going to school on Monday, Yuugi gets dropped off at Tanaka-ba’s and Jii-chan heads out to do… something. Tanaka-ba is the neighborhood cat lady and in an ongoing fight with the trash-grandmas about how much cat litter she brings out on burnable garbage days. She used to be a hero but retired fifteen years ago to breed Turkish Angoras, which are longhaired, fluffy, and like climbing on EVERYTHING. The main reason Yuugi doesn’t spend more time at her place is that while any of the neighborhood kids (she likes) can come play with her cats, you have to help her with the litter boxes, brush the cats, sweep up after the cats, or if you show up at the wrong times, feed her Horde. Yuugi hadn’t realized cats could swarm, but they DO, and Angoras are REALLY BIG when you’re six. Also, cat hair. Over EVERYTHING. He keeps pulling it off his clothes but there’s always more. It’s worse than when they use glitter at school. But honestly, as long as he avoids feeding times and tracks the cat-breeding schedule correctly, it’s totally worth digging out cat poop to play with a bunch of kittens. 

Except for Ra. 

Right now, she has three batches of kittens at four weeks old, five weeks old, and seven weeks old. They’re mostly tabbies and white tabbies but two of the younger ones are dark brown. She handed him a broom when he came in and told him to sweep the main floor, but he’d finished that and was sitting on the floor with four kittens arguing over who got his lap. He’d been trying to keep an eye out for Ra, but the kittens were REALLY small and soft and fluff, and then Ra materialized in the room and kicked the kittens out of Yuugi’s lap. Ra’s Tanaka-ba’s oldest Angora and is a dark brown tabby with golden brown bits, yellow eyes, and really, really pointy claws. Around when Yuugi was five Ra had decided that if Yuugi sat down he wasn’t allowed to stand or move or do anything that didn’t involve being Ra’s cat furniture. He was really soft and fluffy at least. Yuugi pets him resentfully as Ra purrs. 

“You’re lucky he likes you so much,” says Tanaka-ba, coming into the room. She’s holding her tablet in one hand and supporting one of the older white tabby kittens on her shoulder with the other. 

Yuugi stops petting him. Ra rests his paws on Yuugi’s legs. His paws that end in pointy things, which Yuugi can feel through his pants. Yuugi starts petting him again. The pointy bits stop poking him. “Remind me what it’s like when he DOESN’T like you?” 

“He ignores you except to piss in your shoes. Sometimes your bag.”

He likes his shoes. They’re purple and comfortable and most shoes are not comfortable OR purple, but they’re not very good with wet and cat pee is VERY wet. Plus, cat pee SMELLS, and shoes already get kind of gross from sweat and bacteria, they don’t need help smelling. Petting Ra is better than cat pee in his shoes. He guesses. 

Tanaka-ba leans over to lower the cat she’s shoulder-training. “Haven’t seen Sugoroku look that pissed since that time with the insurance company, someone fucked up,” she says, picking up one of the dark kittens. It squirms but allows her to bring it up to her shoulder without scratching. “That fucking teacher?” 

Yuugi glowers at Ra, who twists his head so Yuugi’s petting all around his ear and forehead. “She did some stuff to my grades and I didn’t notice but everyone else did so Jii-chan’s mad at me for not noticing or telling him and he’s mad at her and he’s mad at the school and he’s going to go yell at people.” Ra pushes his head into Yuugi’s hand harder. 

“Yuugi, you could tell your grandfather you killed someone and he wouldn’t be mad at you, pretty sure he’s not mad at you for not noticing someone fucking with your grades.” 

Yuugi jerks up from Ra to stare at her, because WHAT. “Why would I KILL someone???” 

Tanaka-ba makes a considering noise while petting and balancing the kitten. “Okay, if you killed someone he probably would be mad, but he wouldn’t STAY mad, you’re hard to stay mad at. Whenever someone’s angry with you you start crying and curl up like a ball bug, really kills the mood. Remember that time Ra got out and you thought you’d ‘lost him forever’ and tried to confess?” 

Ra had NOT been lost forever, Ra had been out doing a loop of the block like he does EVERY time he sneaks out, but Yuugi hadn’t known that then. He’d tried telling Tanaka-ba he’d lost her cat but kept sobbing before he could finish, and then he’d been so exhausted he had to take a nap and when he woke up Ra was back and squashing his lungs. He’d been five, this is why people knowing you since you were a baby sucked, they never forgot anything embarrassing and didn’t let you either. “Jii-chan would TOTALLY be mad at me if I killed someone, and he’d be DISAPPOINTED, and I don't WANT to kill anyone!”

“Okay, then don’t kill anyone, but my point still stands. Your grandpa loves the shit out of you and if he IS angry he’s angry you didn’t ask him for help sooner, not that you didn’t notice someone was fucking with you.” 

Yuugi looks back down at Ra, who is still pushing his head into Yuugi’s hands. His pants are getting wet spots. Ra drooled when he was getting pets. A lot. Cat drool wasn’t as bad as dog drool but it was still GROSS. “…I don’t want him to have to help me with that stuff. It just makes him stressed. And I know how much he has to do to take care of me already.” 

She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, just lowers herself onto the floor next to him while still holding the dark kitten on one shoulder and fiddling with her tablet with her other hand. She has really good balance. “Your grandpa’s lost a lot, you know,” she says. “His parents went early, and I didn’t know him well when it happened but your grandma dying tore him to pieces, and if it weren’t for him being determined to do right by your mom I don’t know how that would have gone.” 

Jii-chan doesn’t talk about his grandmother a lot, but Yuugi knows Jii-chan never wanted to get remarried, has never even dated though it’s been over twenty years. And Yuugi knows that after his great-grandparents died Jii-chan left Japan for years. 

Tanaka-ba keeps talking. “And honestly? If he hadn’t had you to take care of after Shougi died I don’t think he’d still be here. Whatever shit your grandpa got himself into when he was younger, when he loves someone, he loves them with everything he has and he does his best to do right by them.” She puts the kitten down and settles with the tablet in her lap. “You learn that from him, you’re gonna be a great husband and dad. But anyway. You know what sucked about being a hero?” 

Yuugi opens his mouth. 

She cuts him off. “No, NOT the uniforms. What is it with you and hating hero uniforms, there’s a lot of work that goes into those things.” 

Yuugi frowns. “I met the number two hero. He was on fire.” 

“Yeah, he does that. Try again.” 

Yuugi tries to remember other things she’s said. “The sex-ual-iza-tion of female heroes?” 

“Yes, but not actually what I’m talking about now. No, the thing I hated was that a lot of the time, people didn’t help each other, they waited for a hero to show up and help, and heroes can’t be everywhere at all times.” She scrolls and types something furiously into the tablet. “Not even All Might.”

“…Of course he can’t, his quirk is strength something or other, not duplication. How would that even work?”

“Yuugi, never change. My point is this- your grandpa sees someone is treating you wrong, and he doesn’t wait for anyone else to fix it. He goes in and makes sure it gets fixed. And that’s something not enough people do, see a problem and do what they can to fix it.” 

Ra has apparently decided Yuugi has pet him Enough, and after digging his claws into his legs and leaving some more drool, he climbs off Yuugi and stretches before ambling over to the kittens. Yuugi watches him sit on one. “How am I supposed to know when a problem is something I can fix, or a problem when I need someone to help fix? Or if I should even TRY to fix?” 

“Oh, you’re gonna love this answer,” says Tanaka-ba. “Winged Ra!” She hisses between her teeth. Ra stops sitting on the flailing, mewling kitten and stalks off, his tail trailing after like a floofy banner. The darker bits on his back that look kind of like wings catch the sunlight and glow. “You learn from experience, each experience is a little different, and you keep having new experiences until you die. Also after you die, depending on what spiritual practices you wanna subscribe to.” 

Yuugi thinks about that. He nods. “Your advice sucks.” 

“Hey hey, I’m the one giving you valuable life guidance here, if that’s the respect you’re gonna show your auntie you can go clean the litter boxes.” 

Yuugi groans and stands up- you can’t argue with Tanaka-ba. Well, you CAN, you just lose. “I’m not doing all of them!” 

“You can do two and then see if I’m in a better mood.” 

He cleans two litter boxes and then gets to play with the kittens for a bit before Ra finds and kidnaps (catnaps?) him again. Ra’s a jerk. A soft fluffy jerk, but a jerk. Jii-chan shows up a little after noon, when Yuugi’s getting hungry, and after talking quickly with Tanaka-ba out of Yuugi’s hearing, takes Yuugi to his favourite burger place. He has a satisfied look and Yuugi doesn’t want to know, except he kind of does, except he kind of doesn’t. Yuugi fiddles with the crinkly paper wrapped around his burger and chews on his lip. 

“Do you want details?” asks Jii-chan. He ordered a chicken burger with no fries; he keeps eating Yuugi’s fries and normally Yuugi would try harder to protect them, but his brain keeps going places that don’t involve fries. 

Yuugi thinks about it. Jii-chan steals another fry. “No. But, um. What happened without saying what happened?” 

“You have some homework I need you to do before Wednesday, you’re staying home tomorrow, and she won’t be a problem again.” 

Yuugi swallows. His stomach is tight. “Are you sure?” 

“If she’s in the classroom when you go to school on Wednesday, turn around, go to the game store, and I’ll go yell at people again.” Jii-chan reaches across the table and squeezes Yuugi’s wrist carefully. “She’s no longer your teacher.” 

Yuugi lets his breath out in a long, slow sigh. “Okay.” He looks at his hamburger. His stomach growls. “Can I get another burger?” He eyes the mostly empty paper bag his fries came in. “…And more fries?” 

Jii-chan takes another couple of fries. “Finish that burger first, and if you still want one, yes.” 

“…and the fries?” 

Jii-chan takes another fry. “I don’t know, look how many you’ve already eaten, they’re almost gone, eating so many really isn’t healthy for a boy your age-” 

“Jii-chan!”  
________________  
Tuesday Yuugi doesn’t go to school but goes to the shop with Jii-chan. Jii-chan gives him a packet of weird homework to work on and tells him to finish whatever he can. Some of it’s really easy and some of it’s really hard. He goes over to Izuku’s when Izuku’s out of school and they play the hero MMORPG and Yuugi stays for dinner (chicken fried rice; it has scallions but Yuugi doesn’t not like scallions the way he doesn’t like onions or shallots, even if he thinks everyone undercooks them). 

Wednesday he goes to school like normal. Or like, normal if normal involves a teacher kind of getting fired after they kind of faked your grades and you missed a couple days of school while someone yelled at people. Jii-chan tells him to drop the homework packet off with the front office before school so he leaves early. He doesn’t get there early, because OF COURSE he wanders into a hero fight on his way and then has to detour like six blocks and over a bridge. Also his nose won’t stop running or itching because either the villain or the hero was doing something with plants and there was pollen EVERYWHERE. The secretary at the front office gets a really weird look on his face when he shows up and gives him the packet that gets even weirder when Yuugi gives his name and Yuugi does NOT want to know what Jii-chan did or how much yelling happened. 

He knows he’s late but he has to run to the bathroom and blow his nose and then he sneezes eight times and his face looks super gross, but rinsing his eyes and face does make stuff stop itching and less stuff come out his nose. He hurries to the classroom and he’s out of breath and he doesn’t have time to freak out about whether or not Chonou-sensei is going to be there, just rushes in. 

The person at the front of the class is not Chonou-sensei. 

Yuugi bursts into tears. 

The rest of class that morning is about the same kind of awkward. 

At recess, their temporary teacher (Manabu-sensei, wears really thick sunglasses and has a photosensitivity quirk, which doesn’t sound like a quirk as much as a giant pain in the butt) has Yuugi stay inside and explains that the packet Jii-chan had him fill out was supposed to show them if Chonou-sensei had taught him things wrong. To correct any problems, Yuugi was going to have a tutor for at least the next few weeks after school, and they’d give him more info after they’d graded the packet and seen where things were. By the time they finish talking recess is over and class starts again, and when lunch happens Yuugi has to go to the quiet room until things stop feeling fuzzy, and he doesn’t have TIME to talk to anyone other than their new teacher. And then, about thirty minutes before class ends, there’s a prickly weight moving on his leg. 

He does NOT jump up and yelp. He looks down and one of Tokage’s lizards finishes climbing on his leg and looks back up at him. It settles near his lap and goes still; he really hopes it’s sleeping, he is NOT explaining to Tokage that one of his lizards died on him. He always kind of thought lizards slept curled up in a ball, though he hasn’t actually thought a lot about how lizards sleep. Or skinks. Or most reptiles. Except turtles. He’s thought about how turtles sleep. 

Class ends (they didn’t have to clean the classroom today!), and he’s trying to figure out how to move the lizard or wake it, but then Masaki-kun and Nosaka-kun are in front of his desk and talking. He’s trying to listen, but he’s also still focused on the lizard, but he can’t show he’s paying attention to the lizard so they won’t pay attention to the lizard, so he’s not really following what’s going on. 

Suddenly Tokage is ALSO next to his desk. “Yuugi,” says Tokage loudly. “The thing.” 

“The thing?” 

Tokage glares. “The. Thing,” he repeats, like Yuugi is supposed to know what thing, there are LOTS of things. He looks down as he feels the lizard move (not dead! Yes!), and it’s crawling down his leg and into his bag. Cool, he doesn't have to sit so still, and Masaki-kun DEFINITELY can’t see the lizard now. 

“That means he wants you to go or do something with him. Do you want to? If not I’ll kick him,” says Masaki-kun. Her arms are crossed and she’s glaring at Tokage. She’s not as good at it as him but she’s still pretty scary. 

Oh. Ohhhhhh. “You don’t need to kick him!” says Yuugi. He hurries to stand up before she decides to anyway. He picks up his backpack carefully and holds it by the straps instead of swinging it onto his back. 

“Like I’d just let you kick me.”

A coloured haze starts sparking around Masaki-kun. “Are you SURE you don’t want me to kick him?”

“No! No kicking!” Masaki-kun shifts from one leg to the other and keeps glaring at Tokage. The sparks flutter. “Um. I can have you kick someone next time I need someone kicked?” 

“You better,” she says firmly, which confuses him, and then suddenly she’s reaching for him and before he can dodge she’s… hugging him? She lets him go before he can process any of it and nods at him. “I mean it.” 

Yuugi blinks. “Uh. Thank you?” 

She nods again, the sparks settling back into her. She grabs Nosaka-kun’s hand and glares at Tokage again before heading out. Tokage makes an annoyed noise and turns to leave the classroom, his coat swishing. Yuugi hurries after him. 

“What’s the name of the lizard in my bag?” asks Yuugi when they’re out of the classroom and past their classmates. 

There’s a long pause. “Lizards don’t do names. Not the way we do.” 

“Oh. How do they do them?” 

“They-“ Tokage makes a frustrated noise. Not a frustrated at Yuugi noise, a frustrated because a word doesn’t have the right meaning noise. Yuugi’s familiar with both. “They don’t have the same concept of self humans do. They’re… them. A lizard knows who a lizard is.”

“Does that mean lizards don’t have names for other lizards either?” 

“They’re not social the way we are, so they don’t need names. They don’t do friendships or allies or families or stuff like that. Also, stop asking me things about lizards, they have nothing to do with my quirk.” Tokage says the last part like he’s reading it from a really boring book. 

“I was asking ‘cause I wanted to know if YOU had names for them, but that stuff was interesting too,” says Yuugi. “...Do you have names for them?” 

“…Shut up about the lizards or I’m not playing chess with you.” 

The usual classroom still has the teacher in it, so Tokage takes them to 5-B instead, since 5-B is super small and always seems to get out early. Yuugi keeps hearing on the playground that class 5-B doesn’t actually exist, or that it only exists as long as no one’s looking at them, which seems dumb. Like, one or two students having a notice-me-not quirk kind of makes sense, not an ENTIRE class AND the teacher. 

Yuugi puts his backpack down carefully. As he reaches into his bag to grab the chessboard, the lizard crawls out, onto the desk, and over to Tokage. He pulls the chessboard out of its thick fabric bag, flips it open, and removes all the chess pieces from their slots so he can start setting up the board. 

“So,” says Tokage. He doesn’t say anything else. He keeps not saying anything else in a way that sort of says he wants to but doesn’t really know what or how. 

Kind of helps that for ONCE, Yuugi’s pretty he knows what he’s trying to talk about. He picks black and starts setting up the board, listens to the soft little click as the stone pieces touch the squares. “You realized on Friday Chonou-sensei was marking my assignments wrong and wanted me to bring stuff to prove it on Monday so you could do something, but then Izuku noticed too and had me tell Jii-chan who went and yelled at people so I wasn’t at school on Monday or Tuesday, and now we have a different teacher.” 

“She was doing a crappy job of it. Why didn’t you notice?” 

Yuugi stops setting up the chess pieces. He swallows and stares at the white rook and knight. “I um. I kind of did. I think. But. She said I was wrong, and she’s- she was our teacher. You know?” 

Tokage makes an annoyed sound. “I literally just had this conversation with my brother, who isn’t even in primary school yet, and I guess I’m having it with you too. So: someone being a teacher, a hero, or a police officer, or, I don’t know, a herpetologist, doesn’t mean they’re right.”

Yuugi’s brain goes blank. He looks up at Tokage. “What?” 

“You aren’t stupid, so don’t act stupid. Just because someone’s a hero or a teacher or whatever doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong. Thinking like that gets you screwed over. So. Next time something happens where you think something’s wrong and someone tells you it isn’t wrong and you’re stupid, go, I don’t know, get your dumb friend to check or your grandfather to check. Because all of this could have been resolved months ago and we could have gotten a non-idiot teacher that much faster.” 

Yuugi keeps staring at him. Tokage’s face is red and he’s looking past Yuugi really hard, and another lizard has appeared in front of the game board. Yuugi doesn’t have any idea what to say to any of that so he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “Are we friends?” 

“We’re not friends, we’re rivals.” 

Yuugi’s sort of wanted to ask Tokage about being friends for a while and had thought of a lot of answers he’d give. That was. Not one of them. “What’s wrong with being friends?” 

Tokage crosses his arms. His face is less red and he’s looking at Yuugi. “Rivals are more valuable. Friends don’t make you stronger. Having a rival does. Look at Endeavour and All Might.” 

“…Hasn’t Endeavour been the number two for like, twenty years?” 

“NOT THE POINT. Anyway, if you’re going to be my rival you have to get good grades. And you having good grades will make me have better grades, and if you’re smarter, you’re a better chess player, and you being a better chess player will make me a better chess player. So you’re my rival and you can’t be stupid or else it makes me stupid.” 

Yuugi stares at him. He realizes he’s smiling, and his left hand starts shaking. “You’re so, so weird.” 

Tokage starts to smile, but then it turns into a grimace and he holds his hand up and turns his head. “Stop getting your emotions over everything, quit it or I’m leaving before we even play chess.” 

“That’s not how emotions work?” 

“Well, it is with you. Seriously, knock it off or else.” 

Weird. He is SO weird. But Yuugi takes a deep breath, focuses on the chessboard and the lizards, and feels the happiness that’s prickling and bubbling sort of fizz into his feet instead of through his hands. His feet keep shaking but his hand stops. “You’re white, you have to start the game.” 

It’s a good game. Chess games are loosely divided into three parts: the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. Each stage plays into the other and if you don't make the right moves in the opening you can’t make the right moves in the middlegame and you lose control in the endgame. It reminds Yuugi of the parts of poker he actually does like, where you focus on building a good hand and how to use it to the best advantage. Yuugi’s still not great at thinking of long term consequences from moves in the opening, but he’s getting better at responding to Tokage in the middlegame, and he manages to promote a pawn to a queen before Tokage checkmates him. 

Tokage’s explaining why promoting the pawn didn’t work in this game, and the third lizard crawls up onto the table from somewhere to join the rest. Yuugi stares at them and, suddenly, realizes something. He shouldn’t say it. He shouldn’t. But he keeps thinking it and finally his mouth opens and out comes, “I know why the lizards keep showing up.” 

Tokage stops talking about the game and looks down at him, slowly, with narrowed eyes. “...Why?”

It’s so obvious, if you know Tokage. But Yuugi guesses that’s the thing, most people don’t. Maybe that’s how Tokage likes it. “Because they like you.” 

Tokage turns RED, bright red, like redder than Izuku red, like turning his skin colours is actually his quirk like the kid in 5-C red. “You take that back, my quirk has nothing to do with lizards!” 

Yuugi crosses his arms, because Tokage feels angry but not angry-angry, just loud-angry, and it’s not spiky but it’s still intense. And Yuugi is NOT taking it back. “Doesn’t have to be your quirk, they still like you.” 

They don’t play a second game. Tokage storms out of the room but not before (carefully) letting the lizards crawl under his jacket as he glares at Yuugi. Yuugi feels a little bad, but not really. The lizards DO like him. He’s not sure why it’s just those three or if it even is the same three, but they’re Tokage’s and they like him. 

Some parts of him are really easy to like, when you know him.  
________  
For the next few months, there’s a new normal. Yuugi gets tutoring every other day after school and he and Tokage play chess on the days he doesn’t. Yuugi still doesn’t beat him but he gets to a point where he gets him in check at least every other game. Jii-chan and Yuugi go to the Midoriya’s for New Years and he and Izuku get in a soba eating contest that only ends when Izuku sneezes and sprays the soba he’s eating all over Yuugi and Yuugi’s bowl. Still better than the Mochi Incident the previous year. He gets otoshidama from Jii-chan, Midoriya-san, and Tanaka-ba and spends almost all of it on chess books. Also a Japanese-English dictionary, because one of the books is in English and his English is… not great. He keeps wandering into villain attacks and Izuku keeps wearing long-sleeve t-shirts and there’s stuff that needs to be better but things feel easier, feel like they WILL get better instead of like he has to hope they might. 

And then something changes again. 

When Yuugi was eleven months old his mom left him with Jii-chan and headed out to meet up with a client. She’d taken her usual shortcut through an underground shopping arcade to get to the subway. But there’d been a villain attack on the street above, and the street collapsed onto the arcade. 23 people were killed, including Yuugi’s mom.

The villain hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He was nineteen, he hadn’t realized there was an underground arcade there, and he’d immediately surrendered when it collapsed. The arcade had been designed to withstand earthquakes, but the shaking had been stronger than the builders had planned for, or that building codes called for. No one had meant for it to happen. It just did. 

Sometimes, stuff just happened. People got sick. People got hurt. People died. People left your life, even people you cared about, and you couldn’t do anything about it. 

Seven weeks before they move up a year, Tokage doesn’t show up for class. And he’s not there the next day either. And then Manabu-sensei tells them that Tokage’s parents were in an accident, and that Tokage will no longer be attending their school. 

The next few weeks are bad. Really bad. And it’s kind of dumb, because Yuugi’s known Tokage since first grade but he’s only really known known him since summer break. It shouldn’t hurt him so much, that he’s gone. That he can’t play chess with him again, or ask him to explain things, or hear him talk about lizards or snakes or his brother. That he didn’t get to introduce him to Izuku. But it does hurt. And he does miss him. 

And Yuugi can’t find Tokage, but finally, he realizes there’s something he can do. 

He’s going to keep playing chess, even if the only people he can really play that push him the way Tokage did are online. He’s going to play an hour every day, or more. He’s going to study, and he’s going to get better.

One day, somehow, he will meet Seto again. And when he does, he’ll be strong enough to beat him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, do you know that we don’t canonically know Kaiba’s last name before he was adopted? So if an author was writing him in a fic and didn’t want people to know who they were referring to, you could just use any last name you wanted? Have fun going back and rereading their interactions now you know that. 
> 
> Seto's quirk does involve lizards, he's a lying liar who lies. It is with lizards specifically and allows him to communicate with, understand, and to some degree give orders to lizards. Also lizards that spend enough time around him get a little... weird. That's all I'm saying for now. 
> 
> Also, I firmly believe that Seto was a weird child long before Gozaburo showed up, and that if he hadn’t become a Kaiba he still would be trying for world domination or corporate espionage before he finished high school. He was the kind of kid who was writing a five year plan in elementary school. He was writing it with a gel pen, but still. 
> 
> This chapter took forever because everyone kept having emotions at everyone about everything. Also I hurt my back and may or may not have kidney stones, so that also took up some time. I wasn't even going to have Chonou-sensei mess with Yuugi's grades or have there be fallout from that originally, but Seto's character decided otherwise. Also, Izuku was correct. Seto had a plan and it would have gone like a house on fire. 
> 
> Tanaka-ba is an original character because both Yugioh and BNHA are sadly lacking in aromantic athletic cat ladies and I needed her for plot reasons. 
> 
> Will I ever stop having Yuugi throw casual shade at Endeavour? No. 
> 
> Also, thanks to Icka for helping me resolve some transition points!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. lying: reclining in a horizontal position

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotions are kind of dumb, when you think about it.

Technically, Yuugi doesn’t lie. 

Like, he CAN, it just makes him super uncomfortable. And he’s really bad at it.

But he does have stuff he won’t talk about. And actually, it’s considered rude to tell the truth about everything all the time? Like when a neighbor asks how he’s feeling, or someone makes him food he can’t eat and wants to know how he liked it, or someone at the store asks who his favorite hero is. And Yuugi doesn’t get a lot of this stuff but he’s figured out that people are generally only okay with him being autistic as long as he doesn't make them uncomfortable, and him forgetting tatamae too much makes people REALLY uncomfortable. 

So it’s not that Yuugi lies, exactly, but he’s learned how to reframe things. Like saying something was interesting instead of stupid or painful or stressful, because technically, everything WAS interesting from someone’s perspective. (Just. Not his). Or saying that it was thoughtful when someone did something for him he hated, like putting extra squid in his stir fry or giving him the scratchiest scarf he has ever encountered (He STILL doesn’t know what it was made from. He keeps going in yarn shops and not even the scratchy stiff type acrylic makes his skin hiss the way that scarf did. Had Ito-san accidentally bought like, industrial grade thread like the stuff they use in hero costumes and knit it from that? HE DOESN’T KNOW). And when reframing doesn’t work, Yuugi just… tries to talk about other things. It’s not really lying if you never bring it up or make sure to change the topic whenever stuff comes up. And most of the time people don’t actually care what he has to say and want to talk about the other topics, so usually it works out! 

But like, the problem with reframing and omitting things is that it becomes a habit. And sometimes you forget you’re doing it? And sometimes you kind of maybe forget that the stuff you don’t talk about with one person isn’t the stuff you don’t talk about with another person. 

…Anyway Yuugi has no idea how he’s known Izuku for four years and Tanaka-ba being a hero never came up? 

Yuugi introduced Izuku to Tanaka-ba a few months after they met, because KITTENS. Tanaka-ba made Izuku clean the litterboxes the first few times but ultimately decided he could stay. Yuugi thinks the main reason Tanaka-ba likes Izuku, besides Izuku being Izuku, is because being obsessed with quirks also means knowing things about genetics and there’s a lot of genetics with cat breeding. Most Angora breeders breed for white cats, while Tanaka-ba breeds for tabby or dark haired cats, meaning she has to do more work than most breeders to avoid inbreeding or negative recessive traits. Most of the time she spends on her tablet involves using a program that looks sort of like Excel to track genetic breeding lines and traits. It also has a section where she lists breeders she’s fighting with or that offered breeding stock to someone she blacklisted or that are breeding for traits she thinks are dangerous, like the weird squashed face thing. (In addition to genetics, cat breeding involves maintaining, tracking, and periodically updating a lot of grudges). 

Izuku could listen to her talk about the genetics stuff and knows how to ask questions about all of it, and Yuugi doesn’t think Tanaka-ba has a lot of people she can talk about that at. Also when Izuku talks about different heroes Yuugi’s pretty sure Tanaka-ba personally knows at least half of them and is thinking about embarrassing or dumb things they’ve done while he gushes. Sometimes she’ll share the embarrassing or dumb things, which is why Yuugi knows about that one time in high school Present Mic exploded a subway car window because he saw a cockroach. (Yuugi never wants to meet Present Mic, but if he ever does, and it’s on a subway, he’s never broken out of a subway car before but HE WILL). 

Anyway they were at Tanaka-ba’s since she’d been in a bad mood because of a mishap with her breeding queens. Yuugi wasn’t really paying attention to what Tanaka-ba was saying (something about her niece?) when suddenly Izuku starts flailing and screams “OH MY GOD YOU WERE THE KNOCK-OUT HERO!” 

Yuugi flinches, because LOUD, and Ra, who is sitting on Yuugi’s lap, makes an annoyed mrrp as his ears flick back. Ra does not like Izuku. Ra, in fact, peed on one of Izuku’s shoes the second time Izuku visited. Yuugi retaliated by hissing at Ra every time Ra tried to get pets on his next visit. Ra hasn’t peed on anything of Izuku’s again but there’s a lot of glowering. Also shredding things while making eye contact. “Loud!” 

Izuku spins and points at Yuugi. “Yuugi! She was the Knock-Out Hero Eclipse! She was in the top fifty ten years running! She defeated Somnambulist! Circadian Glitch! Millennium Steve-” 

“Man, that brings me back. Adopted Ra from him when he went to jail. Had to change his name from Mega Ultra Chicken, breeding registry throws a fit you try and put something like that on breeding papers.” Tanaka-ba smiles fondly, like the villain’s one of the cats she’d adopted out that showed up on the local news feed. “Still send him pictures of Ra and his descendants every New Years. Nice guy when you got all the attempted murders out of the way.” 

Izuku looks like he’s going to pass out or puke. “CanIhaveyourautograph?” and Yuugi’s not sure how Izuku managed to get his one of his notebooks and a pen out that fast, but he did. Yuugi’s kind of jealous, he can never find a pen when he needs one. 

Tanaka-ba takes the notebook and pen. “Breathe, kid. I’ve made you clean up cat puke and cat shit.” She signs it. “Also your memory’s terrifying, you hero otaku. You have stats memorized for everyone who was in the top fifty for the past twenty years?” Izuku turns bright red, and wow, that’s a lot of information, he’s impressed. Tanaka-ba laughs and hands Izuku back the notebook. Izuku stares at it for a moment before hugging it to his chest super tight. “You figure out how to use that for schoolwork, you’re going to ace any high school or college entrance exam you take.” 

Izuku suddenly gets really stiff. “I… want to go to Yuuei.” 

“My niece went there, lot of hiring power in that name. What program? General Education? Support?” 

Yuugi can see Izuku swallow. “…The Hero course.” 

“Ah,” says Tanaka-ba. She doesn’t say anything else. Izuku keeps hugging the notebook to his chest and staring at the ground. Yuugi looks down at Ra and keeps petting him. Ra’s purrs are almost loud enough to drown out the hammering sound rising up to his ears. 

“You were a hero,” says Izuku finally. His voice is shaky, but there’s something hard underneath. Firm. “Do you think-“ he stops. Yuugi hears him swallow. “Can someone without a quirk become a hero?” 

Tanaka-ba exhales. Yuugi looks up and sees her settle herself on the floor near him. She pats the ground next to her and looks at Izuku. “Sit.” 

Izuku sits. He’s still clutching the notebook to his chest. 

“Entrance exams into hero courses are specifically designed for applicants with destructive quirks,” says Tanaka-ba. Her voice is matter-of-fact, like she’s talking about the weather. “Some schools, it’s impossible to pass the exam without one. And then internships are rigged for students with powerful quirks. So are the licensing exams. And after graduation, the rankings. You’d be at a significant disadvantage for your academic and professional career. And while some of that’s more about financial success, a lot of it is about your safety and your ability to protect others.” She places her tablet on the ground. Izuku’s staring at the floor. The room feels like a glass on the edge of a table. “Why do you want to be a hero?” 

“I want to help people,” Izuku whispers, voice catching on the words. 

“Being a hero isn’t the only way to help someone. You already have some of the best analytical quirk skills I’ve ever seen and you’re not even in middle school. You’d be amazing in Support. Hell, you want to go into Quirk counseling or Forensic Quirk Studies, you’d always have a job. You could help people a lot easier that way.” 

“But-“ Izuku swallows. It takes him a while before he continues. Yuugi keeps his eyes on Ra, feels a tight, taut, jagged thing in his chest. “But if I do any of those things, it won’t be because I wanted to do them. It’ll be because I couldn’t do the real thing I wanted. Because I gave up.” 

“The world isn’t fair and we rarely get what we want. Most of being an adult is about making peace with that. Is it going to be easier doing that with a job you’re good at that wasn’t what you wanted, or doing a job where everyone’s going to tell you you should have chosen something different?” 

There’s a long pause. “So. So you’re saying that you don’t think I can. That I should just give up. That I-“ 

“You’re missing the point. I’m asking you to think, with everything I’ve said, do you still want to be a hero? Still think it’s worth trying?” 

“Yes,” says Izuku immediately. 

“Well then,” says Tanaka-ba. “What the hell does my opinion of whether or not you can do it matter?” 

Izuku bursts into tears, so then Yuugi starts crying and can’t stop, and Ra gets annoyed with the noise and wet and stalks off to do something that has less crying children. Tanaka-ba doesn’t exactly do the same, but after throwing a tissue box at them, waiting for the crying to slow down, and confirming neither of them are dying (her words, not his) she comes up with something she needs to do that means they need to leave now. 

“Okay, seriously. Did you forget to tell me she was a hero?” asks Izuku when they’re outside. He’s still sniffling, a little. His face is all red and gross. 

“Um.” 

“How do you FORGET something like that?” 

“She has cats! That’s way more important!”

“Cats are not more important than heroes!” 

“Okay, fine, more RELEVANT, kittens and cats are more relevant, and like, in urban areas that have rat or mouse problems they’re super important, there were all these articles about breweries and rice shops that are keeping cats because it drives rodents away and they don’t have to use heavy grade uh- pesticides? Is pesticides the word? You know, when you’re trying to kill like insects or pest animals?” 

“I think… insecticides? No, that doesn’t work with rats. But pesticides is plants.” 

“Okay, but anyway, having cats to keep the rodent population in check means they don’t have to use whatever those poisons are so then they’re less likely to get into like, into the dust people breathe so it’s better for everyone, and like, arsenic is a component of a lot of those poisons and arsenic’s a heavy metal-“

“And there’s at least three heroes I can name that work with breaking down environmental heavy metal toxins, like how Mermaid helped with the Minamata Disaster, so heroes ARE as relevant and important as cats,” says Izuku. “Okay, I need to ask, do you know anyone ELSE who’s a retired hero?” 

“Um.” Technically, he doesn’t know anyone, other than like, some of Jii-chan’s drinking and game buddies, and they don’t count, because he’s pretty sure some of them are also retired villains and he’s not sure who’s which. And Izuku said retired. 

“Wait, you DO? Who? Who is it? Holy crap, is it Mutou-jii? Is Mutou-jii a retired hero???” 

“Why would you- he left the country before he finished high school, and he wouldn’t have passed the background check after he came back,” says Yuugi, who still Does Not Want To Know what Jii-chan got up during that ten year stretch but has had his plausible deniability take a lot of hits. Many hits. That time All-Might leveled a city block from the stratosphere to take out killer robots level of hits. “Like, I don’t think you know any other people I know who are retired heroes? But why Jii-chan?” 

Izuku fiddles with the strap on his bag. “ Well, he’s good at getting people to do stuff and listen to him, and he knows almost all the police in this prefecture and in Musutafu, and that would make sense if he knew them from when he worked with- uh. Are you okay?” 

Yuugi’s face is red. He can’t see it but his cheeks feel so warm it has to be almost as red as Izuku’s. “That’s not- he didn’t- that’s mostly ‘cause of me?”

There’s a long pause and Yuugi stares REALLY HARD at the Yamamoto’s hydrangea plants. Hydrangeas? Hydrangeas usually meant the flower, not the plant, but it was October, so there weren’t any flowers, but technically it was a hydrangea even without flowers, so probably he could use hydrangeas. 

“Yuugi,” says Izuku. “Like. I know you don’t like talking about it, but like. Your grandfather literally knows almost two prefectures worth of police officers because you keep wandering into active crime scenes or villain fights-“

“I know-“

“-Like, knows them to the point he knows and remembers their birthdays-“

“I KNOW-“

“And like, I’m not SAYING it’s a quirk but there are some cool new quirk monitoring apps you could try on your phone-“

“I’m not doing it on purpose, I’m not activating a quirk, that’s not how it works and even if it was I don’t care about my quirk!” 

There’s a weird look on Izuku’s face and he doesn’t say anything for a minute. “Okay. Nevermind. I’m gonna- I should head back.”

Yuugi blinks. “I thought you were- okay. Text you later?” 

“Yeah, sure,” says Izuku. The weird look is still there as he waves and turns to leave.

He missed something. What did he miss?  
\------  
“Emotions are dumb,” Yuugi tells Jii-chan as they’re finishing up dinner. He slices the bok choy harder than he should but whatever, he’s watching the knife and his fingers.

“Are they dumb because you’re feeling them, or because someone else is?”

Yuugi scowls. “Yes.” He minces the garlic aggressively and passes the cutting board over to Jii-chan so he can add it to the stir-fry. 

“I don’t know when you learned to abuse yes or no questions but the Japanese language did nothing to deserve it,” says Jii-chan. “Careful cleaning the knife.” 

Yuugi WAS being careful, he isn’t going to cut anything. He cleans the knife and the cutting board Jii-chan passes him; the smell and taste of garlic seep into whatever you use to cut them so you have to clean them quickly. Allium vegetables are HORRIBLE like that. He thinks it’s the sulfur. He portions out the rice to the sizzle-hiss of Jii-chan finishing the pork stir-fry. 

After dinner Jii-chan has them play blackjack, which Jii-chan started teaching him about a year ago and he likes MUCH better than poker. One person acted as dealer- almost always Jii-chan- and another person as player. The dealer dealt themselves two cards, only one of which the player could see, and dealt the player two cards to start. The player looked at their cards and the dealer’s card and had to decide, based on the number value of the cards, whether they wanted the dealer to give them more cards or stick with the cards they had. After the player decided how many cards they wanted the dealer would flip their second card. The goal was to have a bigger total than the dealer, unless the dealer broke 21, in which case you also wanted to have 21 or less. The best way to win, as the player, was to understand and calculate the odds of the dealer’s second card letting them go over 21, and the odds of going over or hitting 21 with every additional card received. 

It was tricky; it meant tracking how many decks of cards were being used, what cards had already been played, and the probability of cards that hadn’t been played entering play. At first Jii-chan would let him scribble calculations on paper but now Yuugi has to do it in his head. He finds it kind of soothing. Probability and statistics are a weird kind of math because there’s always random, uncontrolled elements that impact the outcome but like, that randomness is SUPPOSED to be there. It’s when it’s missing that it means something is wrong. Or that your grandfather is manipulating probability. Anyway, unlike poker, blackjack always calms him down.

Which is probably why Jii-chan is having them play it tonight. 

Yuugi picks at one of the cards (bad etiquette, but it’s not like he’s going to mark the decks or switch a card, that’s for poker, not blackjack) and tries to sort through everything from today. “Hey Jii-chan?”

“Yes?” 

He picks at the card again. “Nevermind.”  
\------  
Bakugou’s an asshole. 

Yuugi could deal with that. Some people are just assholes. And it’s been long enough since Seto left that Yuugi can admit he was kind of a jerk. But someone being an asshole or a jerk doesn’t mean they can’t be your friend, just that sometimes you have to remind them to be nicer. Sometimes loudly. 

The part Yuugi can’t deal with- won’t deal with- is how Bakugou being an asshole means Izuku thinks it’s okay for Bakugou to treat him like crap. Like Bakugou SHOULD treat him like crap. And won’t listen to Yuugi when he says that’s wrong. 

Yuugi doesn’t even remember why the fight started. If Bakugou had burned Izuku, kicked him, ripped up his homework, told him he was worthless, or called him that stupid name that just meant Bakugou couldn’t remember how to read. Maybe it was all of them. What he does remember is this: they were in Izuku’s room, Bakugou had hurt Izuku, again, and Izuku was saying- again- that it wasn’t important. And Izuku was still acting weird and he knows he did something wrong but he can’t figure out what or how to ask. 

“Yuugi, it’s not a big deal,” Izuku is saying, like Yuugi’s the one confused about what keeps happening. “Kacchan has an amazing quirk and he has so much potential, I don't want-“ 

And something SHOVES out of him, white and fast and HOT. “What about YOUR potential!” yells Yuugi. “Who CARES what his quirk is if all he does with it is hurt people!”

And Izuku just sort of. Goes still. And then he isn’t still and there’s yelling. “EVERYONE cares! Everyone cares that he has an amazing quirk! Everyone knows he’s going to be a hero because he’s strong and he’s smart and he isn’t some USELESS, QUIRKLESS hero otaku!” 

Yuugi’s frozen. Izuku’s crying. “And you don’t get it! You don’t care! I would give ANYTHING to have a quirk and you don’t even want to talk about it! You have something I’m NEVER going to have and you don’t even WANT IT!” 

It’s like Izuku hit him. It would hurt less if Izuku hit him. He can’t talk. He couldn’t talk even if he knew what he’s supposed to say. His throat’s frozen and he’s shaking. Izuku’s still crying. 

He leaves. 

He’s not wearing the All-Might house slippers so he stopped and changed into his shoes. He’s at a park near the Musutafu/Korriban prefecture line. He’s not sure how he got there but it’s static, not empty. The hippocampus doesn’t convert all short-term memories into long-term storage. 

He sits on a bench near two of the gingko trees. The first frost hasn’t happened yet so they still have their leaves. No one else is sitting there, probably because while the leaves haven’t dropped the gingko berries have and they stink. He pokes at the smashed orange pulp with his shoe and smells the sulfur. 

He fucked up. 

He’s not sure how, but he did. Of course he doesn’t know how, why would he? Why would his stupid brain tell him when he was making stupid mistakes and not noticing things and doing stuff that hurt his best friend? 

…Is Izuku still going to be his friend? 

He made Izuku cry. He’s made Izuku cry before, Izuku can cry at everything, but not. Not like this. Not like something was being ripped out of him. 

He didn’t know Izuku felt that way about Yuugi’s quirk. He still doesn’t really understand how Izuku feels about his quirk, just that it’s hurting him, and he didn’t notice. 

Would it have been better for Izuku if he’d said he was quirkless? He’s not, and it bugs him when people say he is, because he isn’t, not that it would really change anything if he was. Not that there’d be anything wrong with it, for him. But maybe it would have just made everything worse if he had, because then he’d have been really lying to Izuku, not just. Not just not talking about it. And it isn’t like it matters that much. He could have All-Might’s quirk and people would still think he was broken. It’s not the same, the way he guesses it is with Izuku. 

…He wouldn’t want All-Might’s quirk. Any time he banged into the wall there’d be a Yuugi-shaped hole instead of a sore leg or arm and that kind of structural damage is really bad for buildings. 

Or maybe it wasn’t about his quirk. Maybe Izuku was just fed up with having to tell Yuugi all the stuff he should have figured out on his own. Maybe Izuku wanted friends where he didn’t have to tell them things all the time. 

He doesn’t want to be alone in his brain right now. 

He pulls out his phone. The messaging app has no new messages. 

He should say something. 

**KingofGames**  
I’m sorry. 

There’s no response. He closes out of the messaging app, opens up the chess app, signs in, and accepts a game from the first person in queue. It’s not a very good game; he wins in three minutes and jumps back into the queue. Same for the next two games. None of the recurring players he’s linked at are on and the games he’s playing aren’t complicated enough to work as a distraction. He’ll try one more before logging off and just playing the AI. 

The next game is different. From the start, Yuugi feels his brain FINALLY slide into hyperfocus, because yes. The person is good. The person is very, VERY good. The game lasts eight minutes and he loses, but he got two rooks and a bishop. Which seems kind of- weird, unless. The person sends him a request for another game, he accepts… and confirmed. It’s a teaching game. The person playing is much, much better than him, knows it, and is playing to see how he’ll react. He loses the second game, though he gets them in check twice. The third game is similar but he manages to take their queen. Then the person DMs him. 

**TheFutureLaughsFromtheCeiling**  
I am unable to play another round, but I look forward to playing again. I would recommend paying closer attention to your pawns. 

They sign off before Yuugi can respond, but not before linking with his account. He links them back. 

He hasn’t played a teaching game with someone that much better for a while. Not really since Seto. Really different styles though. 

He hopes they can play together again. 

There’s a response in the messaging app. He takes a deep breath and opens it. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
u were just being a jerk about Kacchan  
ur always a jerk about him so it shouldn’t have made me upset  
I'm sorry 

**KingofGames**  
Tanaka-ba said it didn’t matter what she thought and she has all that stat stuff.  
Bakugou doesn’t have any stats. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
stop talking about Kacchan  
I know u don’t like him  
but u make it like he’s horrible just cause he’s mean to me

**KingofGames**  
I don’t understand.  
You’re my friend and he keeps hurting you. Why isn’t that horrible?  
Are we still friends?  
I’m sorry, I don't understand.  
If you don’t want to be friends with me anymore I understand  
I’m sorry 

**AllMightFan11131**  
of course we're still friends!  
ur my best friend  
i know u don't understand i don't know how to explain it  
that’s not ur fault I know u don’t get that stuff  
I shouldn’t have yelled  
I’m sorry 

**KingofGames**  
You said some stuff about me having a quirk.  
You were really upset about it.  
Can you explain that?  
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and you were really upset.  
I don't want to do it again. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
it’s dumb  
it just can be really frustrating  
u say u have a quirk and that u don’t know what it is but u don’t act like u want to know  
u get upset when I say anything about it  
and like I don't think you’d lie but are u quirkless and u just don’t want to tell anyone?  
I don’t care if u are but if ur quirkless too I don’t get y u wouldn’t tell me

**KingofGames**  
My parents didn’t get married.  
Or they did but the marriage was never registered so it was never official so it was never put into my father’s family registry because my father’s family didn’t want them to get married or have kids.  
And then my mom died and I existed and Jii-chan wrote me into our registry because my father’s family still didn’t want to recognize me or the marriage. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
do u hate talking about it because u think u have the same quirk as ur dad?

**KingofGames**  
You were reading that series of articles three months ago about gene expression? Like how certain genes are linked even if they aren’t related.  
Like how with Angoras long white hair and blue eyes are linked with deafness and hearing issues.  
And how most people who have a quirk have multiple genes that work together so the quirk works and so it’s not degenerative or it’s only degenerative in small amounts. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
the quirk u inherited is degenerative???

KingofGames  
Empathy quirks need to have the limbic system wired specific ways to work but because I have autism my limbic system isn’t wired right.

**AllMightFan11131**  
HOLY SHIT U HAVE AN EMPATHY QUIRK  
THAT’S AMAZING  
DO U KNOW HOW RARE THOSE ARE THEY’RE ONE OF THE RAREST TYPES OF PSYCHIC QUIRKS  
wait it’s degenerative???  


**KingofGames**  
It’s not degenerative I just can’t use it  
My limbic system isn’t wired right  
I can’t activate it.

**AllMightFan11131**  
wait  
but u always cry when I cry and u get happy when other people are happy and upset when other people are upset?

**KingofGames**  
Hyper-empathy isn’t the same as having an empathy quirk.  
You cry too when I cry and that’s not because of a quirk 

**AllMightFan11131**  
y say u don’t know what ur quirk is then?

**KingofGames**  
I’m registered as an empath but the quirk doesn’t have a name or description.  
They’re pretty sure that’s what’s going on but they can’t confirm it without a bunch of tests.  
And when I was four I freaked out during some of them and Jii-chan said he didn’t want them to do any more

**AllMightFan11131**  
do u talk to Mutou-jii about ur quirk?

**KingofGames**  
He doesn’t like talking about it  
He will he just hates it  
It makes him really sad  
But my father and his family have empathy quirks, all the stuff points to me having a quirk, and there’s studies on the limbic system and autism and empathy quirks  
And that’s what Dr. Tsubasa was saying and no one’s disagreed with him. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
so  
do u want to know more about ur quirk?

**KingofGames**  
I don’t know.  
It kind of freaks me out  
And some stuff I’ve read about empathy quirks is really scary  
And when people say I must be using a quirk it’s scary because I don't know I’m doing it  
Like I’m blacking out and stuff is happening when I’m not there to remember it

**AllMightFan11131**  
makes sense  
so i guess  
since u brought up ur dad  
I haven’t talked w mine since Dr. Tsubasa diagnosed me as quirkless

**KingofGames**  
Why not?  
That’s a really long time.

**AllMightFan11131**  
right  
cause he hasn’t talked to me  
can’t confirm w Mom but pretty sure he and she separated after I was diagnosed  
she gets really sad when I ask anything about him

**KingofGames**  
Oh.  
OHHHHHH.  
SorrySorrySorrySorrySorry  
I’m sorry  
I didn’t get what you meant  
Sorry! 

**AllMightFan11131**  
it’s ok  
was kind of confusing  
just  
I get weird stuff w dads  
and not wanting to talk about it  
but like  
it’s ur quirk not ur dad’s quirk  
don’t u want to know how to use it even a little? 

**KingofGames**  
I CAN’T use it.  
My limbic system isn’t wired to use it  
And it really freaks me out that people keep saying I have to be using a quirk when stuff happens because I’m not doing anything  
My brain and body do enough weird stuff  
really really need you to stop saying they’re doing more weird stuff I can’t control that I don’t even know about 

**AllMightFan11131**  
so  
no stuff about empathy quirks?

**KingOfGames**  
It’s okay if you infodump a bunch of stuff about empathy quirks after the google binge.  
you’re doing it right now right

**AllMightFan11131**  
…  
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT ANY OF THESE WORDS MEAN  
parasympathetic nervous system  
vagus nerve  
…  
basal ganglia?

**KingofGames**  
The hippocampus looks like a seahorse.  
Hippocampus means seahorse in Greek. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
hypothalamospinal pathway?

**KingofGames**  
Brain science stuff is super hard.  
Really hard.  
Have fun!  
But like  
Are we okay? 

**AllMightFan11131**  
we’re ok  
…  
substantia nigra pars compacta????? 

**KingofGames**  
Are you going to remember to sleep tonight?

**AllMightFan11131**  
…  
I don’t know???

It’s getting dark and he needs to get home. He closes out of the app and puts his phone away as he gets up from the bench and heads out of the park. 

So Izuku’s still his friend and he isn’t mad at him, or isn’t mad mad with him, or is mad but not the mad that means he never wants to talk to him again, but he doesn’t want Yuugi to talk about Bakugou being an asshole or say Bakugou needs to STOP being an asshole with him. Which kind of DOES make Yuugi mad. Just, UGH. Yuugi doesn’t want to hurt anyone but if Bakugou could get like, kidnapped by a villain and the villain could forget to bring him back that would be great. 

He won’t process whatever’s going to show up from talking to Izuku about his quirk and his father until later, he used up too much already cause of the fight. Texting is so much easier than talking, trying to go into his quirk alone would have probably taken like, a week. Maybe two weeks. Still, just. Even with texting too many things that are complicated and spiky and static. 

He hadn’t known that about Izuku’s dad. Izuku didn’t talk about his dad and Yuugi didn’t talk about his father but they didn’t talk about their fathers differently. Yuugi had just thought he was overseas and couldn’t visit a lot. Yuugi’s familiar with parents leaving kids but he can’t believe anyone knowing Izuku and then doing that to him. Ugh. Dads kind of sucked. Jii-chan didn’t, but he was technically a grandpa so that probably didn’t count. 

He sniffs. There’s a weird smell. Or his nose is FINALLY clearing after being surrounded by gingko berry stink. No, it’s a different smell. Less sulfur-burn/reek more something actually burning. 

A really, really, REALLY familiar fireball slams someone through the glass storefront of a bookstore four shops in front of him. Yuugi hears the glass shattering and burning wood crackling and yelling and groaning and footsteps pounding like his hearing’s connected to a dial being turned from a 2 to an 8. 

…Definitely something burning. 

Yuugi swears and covers his ears.  
\-----  
Yuugi winds up going non-verbal about two minutes into the police questioning him, and then starts crying because he’s overwhelmed and non-verbal and keeps crying because he’s frustrated he’s overwhelmed and non-verbal and crying. He thinks the Flame Hero’s staring at him but he’s on fire, Yuugi isn’t great with body language when it DOESN’T involve flames. Finally Officer Tamura tells him to go sit down and she’ll give him a ride home when they finish up. She takes his cell and calls Jii-chan to let him know what’s going on and Yuugi huddles on the curb, wipes his face, and feels the blank space in his brain spill out like water forming a puddle. He tries to play Tetris after she gives him back his phone but mostly he just sort of sits in the blankness. 

Officer Tamura has him sit in the back as she drives. She’s one of the one’s Jii-chan talks with and knows he can’t talk much when he’s like this, so she doesn't ask him questions or expect him to talk with her on the drive. Yuugi keeps falling asleep and jerking awake, stares at the weird amber/orange shadows spilling from the streetlights into the car. 

By the time they get home he’s exhausted. He stumbles in, remembers to switch his shoes, nods at Jii-chan, and heads over to the kitchen table to get his dinner. Officer Tamura is talking with Jii-chan in the entryway, low enough he could hear they were talking but not loud enough he can make out the words right now. He picks up his dinner, takes it to the butsudan as an offering, prays, brings his dinner back into the kitchen, wraps it up, and sticks it in the fridge. Officer Tamura is still there; Yuugi tugs at Jii-chan’s arm, points upstairs, and goes upstairs and falls asleep. 

He wakes up twice; he thinks the first time is Jii-chan checking on him. The other one he’s not sure why he jerks awake. He falls back asleep but wakes up again about three hours before his alarm. His stomach feels empty so instead of trying to fall back asleep he creeps downstairs to heat up his dinner and finish his homework. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, he just kind of inhales the food. He pokes at his brain and STILL doesn’t know how he feels about the fight with Izuku. Which means whatever emotions he’s going to have about it are going to show up randomly and probably when it’s REALLY inconvenient. Ugh. 

He still has homework so instead of spending more time thinking about how Emotions are Dumb he works on it. He’s finished his worksheets on the periodic table and reviewed for his kanji test by the time Jii-chan comes down.  
“Sounds like you had an exciting day yesterday.” He stops at the table to ruffle Yuugi’s hair; Yuugi leans into the touch and closes his eyes. 

“I don’t like the Flame Hero,” mumbles Yuugi. “He keeps setting things on fire.” 

“That is his job description, but yes, it would be nice if he’d stop setting things on fire when you’re around. Or if you’d stop being there as he’s setting fire to things. I think he’s taking it personally.” Jii-chan heads to the fridge. 

Yuugi crosses his arms. “If he doesn’t want people wandering into his active crime scenes maybe he needs to stop fireballing people into buildings.” He is VERY tired of seeing people fireballed into buildings. “Can we do rolled omelettes? I want a rolled omelette.”

“It’s early enough, how about omuraisu instead?” 

Yuugi likes omuraisu, even if most versions have SO MUCH ketchup and get really really sweet. Jii-chan always adds more okonomiyaki sauce than ketchup, which Yuugi thinks is much tastier even if it’s untraditional. Demi-glace is also nice but he has no clue how to make it at home. “Yes!” 

There was chicken for dinner last night, so Yuugi takes the leftover chicken out of the fridge and carefully chops it off the bone. Jii-chan doesn’t add onions to his, which Yuugi prefers since onions take FOREVER to cook down so they aren’t crunchy and wrong. Also Yuugi hates cutting onions, his eyes don’t just tear up, they HURT. Jii-chan mixes up the egg mixture while Yuugi chops up the carrots (CAREFULLY, carrots can slip), some scallions, and some of the leftover vegetables from the past few days that won’t be too weird in omuraisu. 

“So yesterday I got a call from Dr. Tsubasa.” 

Yuugi blinks. “Didn’t he retire?” They’d gone and seen a new pediatrician this year, it had been a whole Thing. Yuugi liked her even if seeing a new one had been weird. She was a lot less intense than Dr. Tsubasa. Dr. Tsubasa been his mom’s doctor before he was his and while technically Yuugi had never had a really bad visit with him, he’d always wanted to bring up stuff about Yuugi’s quirk. Also his hands were cold. Really cold. 

“He did. However, he’s calling former patients because of the flu vaccine shortage, and as a former medical professional he has access to resources that still have vaccine available. Midoriya-san is going to take you and Izuku next Thursday to get vaccinated.” 

Yuugi makes a face. He doesn’t like getting shots but he also doesn’t like getting sick, and he really doesn’t like Jii-chan getting sick because of him. When enough primary students get vaccinated against the flu, the elderly population stops dying from it, and Jii-chan’s technically an elderly, Yuugi does NOT want Jii-chan to die because of him. Or at all. He has too many dead people he doesn’t know, he doesn’t want ones he DOES know. “Okay. Do they sell demi-glace at stores?” 

“You know, I don’t actually know. We could look the next time we go grocery shopping.” Jii-chan gets the frying pan set up and Yuugi hears the gas click-whoosh as he lights the burner. 

“Maybe. Oh! Can we get persimmons? I want persimmons.” Gingko berries weren’t the same colour or texture as persimmons but looking at the orange fruit yesterday made him want them, and they’re ALMOST in season. 

“If they’re available and the price isn’t ridiculous, yes. Otherwise we’ll wait a few weeks.” 

Yuugi taps his left hand against his thigh excitedly. Winter’s coming and that means persimmons, mikan, and oranges. A bunch of orange fruit. His last winter in primary school. 

He feels like it’ll be one to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tatamae is a concept that doesn’t really translate well word for word in English. It’s used to describe the behaviour and opinions you display in public versus those you do in private. Someone who messes up behaviour or attitudes you take in private versus those you do in public in Japanese society makes people very uncomfortable and will be both regarded as an outsider and someone untrustworthy. 
> 
> So technically, the method Sugoroku has taught Yuugi for how to play blackjack IS how you win at blackjack. However, counting cards is the sort of thing that, while not illegal, will get a lot of people Very Annoyed if not Angry with you and you generally don’t want to do it in casinos or with people who have access to guns. While you are allowed to calculate probability in blackjack you’re not supposed to do it to that extreme; I think it’s like the all you can eat buffet thing. It IS all you can eat, but only within limits imposed by the restaurant. 
> 
> So Bakugou’s still an asshole, and though having even one close friend does a lot to alleviate the impact of bullying, bullying still causes a lot of emotional and psychological trauma. 
> 
> That is Yuugi's social media name on almost every platform he uses and probably will be until the day he dies. 
> 
> Yuugi brings up the family register when talking about his parents. Family registers track both family membership and Japanese citizenship, and each Japanese family has one. A marriage isn’t formalized until it’s been put into the family register. A good way to think about the situation with Yuugi’s parents is that it was like they were married in a religious ceremony but never filed for marriage or got a marriage certificate, and they were in a state that doesn’t recognize commonlaw marriages. It’s gotten less common over the past few decades but after the family registry system was imposed it was relatively common for people to get married but not register the marriage until they had children; this also made divorce on the grounds of infertility that much easier. There’s an interesting example of the legal complications being married but not registered can cause in a plane crash that happened in the 1970s where there were multiple newlyweds or people with new marriages on the plane, and the airline company had to navigate release of the bodies and funeral arrangements when the families of the couples were legal strangers. 
> 
> Japan did have a campaign to vaccinate primary school students against the flu, and mortality rates from flu-related deaths in the elderly did drop as a result. 
> 
> This chapter and the next one are a little short, but some things need to be set up before fun happens. Well. More fun. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. The world's gonna know your name (what's your name man?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are kittens and mild trauma. The trauma does not involve kittens.

There’s a weird blond man next to him. 

Sometimes Yuugi sees people that are weird. It’s not how they look, though he guesses this guy does look kind of weird. He’s REALLY tall, like, would be really tall to people who aren’t Yuugi tall, and skinny the same way he’s tall. Maybe he’s sick, or his quirk burns fat or muscle, or like, he can only be that tall BECAUSE he’s skinny. He’s not doing anything that seems weird, he’s standing back and watching the heroes fight like everyone else. The people that are weird are weird in that it’s kind of… like looking at a sea anemone. Like stuff is there and moving and if he’s watching at the right time he’ll see something happen, so he should keep looking. He’ll get that feeling from Izuku sometimes, or some of the police or heroes, but usually it happens with strangers.

The man looks sad. There’s probably other stuff on his face too but sad is the main thing he gets. Sad enough that Yuugi can’t help it even though he knows it’s rude, he reaches over and waves his hand in front of the man’s face. The man jerks and stares at him. His schlera are black. 

“Hey,” says Yuugi. “It’ll be okay.” 

The man blinks. “I’m sorry young man, what?” 

“It’ll be okay,” repeats Yuugi. He points at the hero who’d just body slammed a giant person-shaped pile of green boulders into the ground. Ow. “That’s my neighbor’s niece. She does this a lot. It’ll be okay.” He scratches his arm. 

The man stares at Yuugi. His face is less sad but he can’t figure out what the less sad bits are. Yuugi squirms, shifts his weight from his left to his right. He knows he’s being rude but he knows hero and villain fights can be scary or upsetting, and probably he shouldn’t have said or done anything but it just. Seems dumb, not to check with someone when they’re sad enough even Yuugi can see it. The man’s face sort of… softens and then he smiles and oh crap, this is worse, he does the smile thing Izuku does, it is TOO LOUD and there are too many people for Yuugi to get person smiling at him emotions. “Thank you, you’re very kind.” 

Yuugi’s face gets really warm and he brings his hands up to cover it. “Not really,” he manages to mumble. Okay, he was nice to the sad person, he’s done talking with strangers for the rest of the day and if the stupid hero fight could end so he could get to the library that would be great. He’d try pushing back and going around but he knows the neighborhood and most of the streets loop and feed back into this plaza so that will just take FOREVER, and probably it’s just going to be faster to wait for them to finish? But now there’s a person standing next to him he talked to who is probably waiting for him to talk back and he doesn’t know what to say? 

And somehow he is saved because Tanaka-ba’s niece has apparently finished knocking out the green boulder person and recognized him. “Yuugi-kun, really? You missed me that much?” 

He lowers his hands to glare at her. “I am TRYING to go to the library, you’re the one having a fight on my route!” He scratches his arm. He risks looking to his right and the weird person is gone. Huh. 

Tanaka-ba’s niece laughs, which is always kind of awkward because her costume? Shows her breasts. Shows that she very definitely has breasts and they are big and there and seriously, everyone keeps TELLING him a lot of work goes into hero costume designs but he can’t believe them. It just looks like she’s wearing a belted corset thing that makes her boobs dangle and Yuugi knows he’s supposed to find it sexy but mostly it looks so, so uncomfortable. Maybe he’ll feel differently after puberty? He doesn’t want to deal with puberty or hormones but being taller would be nice. 

“So, can you remember my name this time?” 

Yuugi feels his face get warm again. “You’re Tanaka-ba’s niece,” he mumbles, staring at the ground. Seriously, it’s unfair he needs to know more than one name for people, it’s not HIS fault he’s terrible at remembering names. And her being Tanaka-ba’s niece is like, way more important to his brain than her hero name or regular name. He scratches his arm. “You’re working on an article about, uh. Erraticness in pre-modern Japanese shunga and superhero pinups in modern Japan?” 

“Eroticism,” she corrects. “Sweet of you to remember the academic article, I might actually build it into a dissertation if I ever have the time. Still not my name.” 

“…it has the kanji for mountain?” Yuugi tries, because that’s a safe guess and he’s pretty sure one of her names actually DOES have that kanji. 

She sighs dramatically. “Really, you need to start carrying a notebook to write this stuff down like your friend, or at least put something in your phone. Kayama Nemuri! The 18+ Only hero Midnight!” She strikes a pose. Her boobs bounce. 

…Seriously. SO UNCOMFORTABLE. 

“I don’t get the 18+ thing,” says Yuugi. He’s pretty sure he’s said this before. He scratches his arm. “Like. I’m not 18. Does that mean I’m not supposed to talk to you or get saved by you?”

“You’re really hung up on the 18+ thing. What’s wrong with your arm?” 

Yuugi jerks his hand away. “Nothing!”

“I’ve known you how many years and that’s the best you can lie to me?” She gives him a Look. It’s not as bad as one of Tanaka-ba’s, but still. 

“…I got a flu shot last week and it did stuff.” 

She frowns. “’Stuff’?” 

“It did the bubble-scab thing.” Jii-chan had called his doctor and she’d given them a list of “go to the hospital if” symptoms to watch for, but apparently it wasn’t a dangerous reaction and mostly he just needed to not scratch it. Which was REALLY hard, it ITCHED. 

Her frown gets weird. “A week ago and it- does your doctor know?” 

He blinks. “Yes?” 

Her frown’s still weird. “Pay attention if it does anything else. And stop scratching it.” 

Yuugi pulls his hand back from above the scab. “I’m not!” 

“You absolutely are. Have a distraction, come meet my friend and you can get his autograph for your friend. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him there’s someone else Ra likes.” 

Her friend is dressed up like a Western knight. Seriously. Hero costumes. WEIRD. Yuugi trails behind her as she heads to the knight hero, his hand bunched up and rubbing over the hem of his shirt. Most of the crowd has cleared except for the usual professionals that show up after a fight, sort of like mushrooms after a storm. Only the storm was people punching things. The purple officer sees him and waves. He waves back. “There are people that aren’t me or Tanaka-ba that Ra likes.” 

“That demon cat hates every person on the planet except you and my aunt and is very happy hating every person on the planet except you and my aunt, you don’t need to defend him. Luxuriate in being one of the two people.” 

It's not like Yuugi did anything special to make Ra like him. Or like Yuugi's special because Ra likes him. 

He scratches his arm again.  
_ _ _ _  
It’s not that he and Izuku are avoiding each other, they’re just. Not spending time together. They’re texting and they had to meet up for the flu shot thing and Midoriya-san took them to get burgers afterwards, but each of them keeps texting each other excuses for why they can’t hang out. Yuugi’s actually kind of grateful Tanaka-ba press-ganged him into helping with a cat emergency, he can’t lie convincingly to Izuku about wandering into hero fights since Izuku actually WILL check online and it’s not like he has any other social stuff. 

For whatever complicated breeding reasons only one of Tanaka-ba’s queens had gotten pregnant on the latest kitten making round, which meant that when the mom decided she didn’t like one of her kittens, Tanaka-ba didn’t have another nursing cat to foster the kitten on, and had to feed the kitten herself. Kittens that small needed around the clock care including being fed every two or three hours. Yuugi’s helped her with feeding kittens before, though just supplementing, not feed-feeding, but it’s apparently enough for Tanaka-ba to tell him he was responsible enough to feed the kitten twice in the afternoons so she could get some sleep. This is his fifth time on his own. 

He lets himself in after school and mixes up the formula before carefully heating it on the stove; you’re not supposed to heat it in the microwave, though he doesn’t know why. It has to be warm- cold milk will hurt the kitten’s stomach- but not hot, because if it burns him it will burn the kitten. He tests it on his wrist- warm- and rinses his wrist off before scratching his arm. Less itchy is still too itchy.

Ra follows him around the kitchen and as he heads to the kitten’s cat carrier. He hasn’t tried to get Yuugi to pet him while he feeds the kitten yet even though he’ll sit nearby and stare ominously the entire time. The carrier has a heating pad on low and blankets; he makes sure the kitten’s warm, not cold, because you can’t feed a cold kitten. Their fur is warm and so, so soft. They mewp at him weakly and nuzzle at his hand. He holds the kitten- feed on their stomach, NOT on their back- and starts feeding them. 

They’re so, so tiny. Their fur is dark brown and their eyes haven’t ever opened and they just lay there with their limbs dangling. They’re so helpless. They can’t even pee or poop on their own, he has to rub their belly with a warm cloth after they eat and then clean up the mess. It’s scary, to have something this small so dependent on him, and Tanaka-ba had warned him that even with everything, they might die. Most litters had at least one stillborn kitten and not all kittens survived to adulthood even when the mom was the one nursing them. He carefully strokes the kitten’s head and back as he feeds them and tries to concentrate. Empathy and telepathy are two different things and his quirk doesn’t even work that way even if it DID work and not all telepathy or empathy involves touch, but he still tries to take the feeling in his stomach and behind his eyes and stuck at the back of his throat and push it at them. 

He cleans up the kitten after they eat. Their stool is still too watery and he doesn’t know how to fix that and Tanaka-ba had said something about diarrhea with formula feeding but he’s going to just have to make a note of it for her and hope she knows what to do. He checks the temperature of the heating pad before carefully returning the kitten to the blanket nest, where they mewp at him again before flopping into a heap. He takes the dirty fabric to the laundry pile, rinses his hands, and folds himself onto the floor. Ra climbs into his lap and sprawls, stretches his paws and flexes his claws in and out as Yuugi pets him on autopilot. Ra is solid the way the kitten isn’t. It’s impossible to think of Ra as something helpless. Someone once broke into Tanaka-ba’s house but by the time Tanaka-ba came downstairs the burglar had almost bled out. Yuugi closes his eyes and breathes. Ra keeps sitting on him and purring. Yuugi keeps petting him. 

It’s not the kitten’s fault their mom didn’t want to keep them alive, and Yuugi doesn’t want it to be his fault the kitten doesn’t get to stay that way.  
\-----  
The kitten’s still alive the next day. And the day after that, and after that, for three weeks. They’re still so small and get cold too easy and their poop is way too runny but they’re still here. They’ve opened their eyes, which are a weird purplish blue even for an Angora kitten, and their meow is more like hooting than meowing, but that stuff is like, normal weird for a cat, not dangerous weird. The kitten has started trying to walk and is very bad at it, like a really drunk salarymen trying to climb train station stairs bad, but that’s also normal for a cat. Their legs are kind of pale brown and the rest of their fur is darker brown with faint tabby stripes, which makes Yuugi think of chestnuts, so he starts calling the kitten Kuri where Tanaka-ba can’t hear. 

Along with surviving being bottle fed, Kuri has also survived Ra. Ra hasn’t, to Yuugi’s knowledge, taken out one of Tanaka-ba’s kittens or other cats yet, but Ra’s kill list includes hawks, owls, tanukis, foxes, koi, house centipedes, and depending on the version, the guy who broke into Tanaka-ba’s house. And Yuugi has been paying a lot more attention to Kuri than Ra. And Ra does sit on the kittens for dominance stuff but Kuri is still so small and Ra’s so big and Ra wouldn’t even have to MEAN to hurt Kuri, and like, Yuugi doesn’t actually know how common cannibalism is in cats (is it cannibalism when the person getting eaten and the person doing the eating aren’t humans? Yuugi wants to know more about cannibalism without learning more about cannibalism) but Ra does keep staring really intently at Kuri and part of Yuugi’s maybe kind of worried Ra’s going to try and eat Kuri so Yuugi will pay more attention to him again. Like, hamsters eat their own young when they’re stressed, and yeah Ra’s fixed so Kuri isn’t his and also hamsters are NOT cats but he worries, okay? 

Kuri falls off his lap. Rolls off? It’s kind of halfway between. They sort of flail and hoot while trying to get themselves upright, kind of like one of the turtles he finds upside down on one of the canals he’ll try to flip back over. (There is so much pee inside turtles. So much. And it SMELLS). He tries to help Kuri roll over but Kuri starts purring and trying to eat his hand instead of getting upright. 

So. SOFT. So sharp but so SOFT. 

“How’s the poop?” asks Tanaka-baa, who has somehow materialized into the room holding a steaming mug with a faded cartoon cat and her tablet. 

Yuugi tries not to yelp, sort of succeeds, and flaps the arm Kuri hasn’t claimed. “Um- still watery? Better I think? Also energy seems to be okay?” 

Tanaka-baa makes a noncommittal grunt and takes a sip of her drink. Yuugi thinks it’s coffee but kitten/cat smells where he is are flooding out anything else from his nose. “You can stop showing up in the evening too.” 

Yuugi looks at Kuri. They’re half-asleep on top of his hand, their paws bobbing slowly like they’re trying to swim. “Is that good or bad?” 

“Kitten’s still alive and old enough to cut down on feedings. That’s good.” 

Yuugi breathes out. “Good.” Ra walks closer to Yuugi and stares expectantly. Yuugi reaches over and pets him with the arm Kuri isn’t using. Ra’s eyes glint as he leans into the petting and begins purring. 

“Surprised your green friend hasn’t helped.” 

Yuugi’s face heats up and he hunches over as he pets Ra harder. “He’s busy. With stuff. So it’s hard to do other stuff because he is busy with stuff.” 

Tanaka-ba makes a noise that means something but Yuugi can’t tell WHAT the something is, and he kind of wants to leave before the something becomes a Thing but Kuri’s still on him and Ra would probably jump him if he tried to leave without more petting so he’s trapped. 

“So. Do you know what’s special about growing rice?” 

That… was not what he thought the something was. He stares at Ra, who probably knows less about rice than Yuugi. “Um. It’s really hard to grow? And you can grow fish at the same time?” 

“More the first bit. People can’t grow rice by themselves. It’s not like wheat or barley or other grains. It needs a community to grow.” 

“…I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me but I don’t think it’s actually about growing rice and also I don’t WANT to grow rice.” 

“Growing it’s a bitch, anyone who talks about the romantic nostalgia of an agrarian elysium is full of shit.” She sips her maybe-coffee. “Anyway. A lot of the ways we communicate developed from us being a rice-growing culture. In a rice-growing culture, people need to be able to get along and live together so they can grow rice together. So social interactions get based around how to work with someone even if you don’t like them, because if they leave, the rice fails and we all starve.” 

Yuugi frowns and his left ankle starts to stim. “But… we’re not growing rice. I don’t KNOW anyone who grows rice.” 

“But most of how we talk about things was set up when we WERE growing rice. Meaning in the interests of getting along a lot of communication was very indirect and circled around problems instead of solving them. Pretty much your least favorite kind of communication, with how your brain is wired, but that’s where we’re at.” 

Yuugi wants to cross his arms, but cats. “I don’t WANT to be indirect, or for people to be indirect, indirect means I miss things and then people get mad and there’s yelling.” 

“Yeah, but most of the people you interact with ARE going to be indirect about things. And you need people in your life that are going to be okay with you being direct, but you’re also going to need to be okay with them being indirect.” 

“I’m not going to be okay with it when it means someone’s getting hurt,” says Yuugi, because he ISN’T. He WON’T. 

“You sound like a baby hero.” Yuugi makes a face, because no. “You’d hate the industry but watching you go after a villain by kicking them in the shins and crying would be HILARIOUS.” 

Yuugi sticks his tongue out. Tanaka-ba sticks her tongue back and takes another drink. “Anyway, don’t be a dick unless someone’s being a dick to you first, but work on remembering YOUR version of being a dick and THEIR version of being a dick aren’t always the same.” She checks something on her tablet. “Everyone’s got their own dicks.” 

“…Except Ra.” Ra’s eyes, which had been half-closed, open all the way. The claws on the paw resting on Yuugi’s knee curl so they’re juuuust about to pierce the fabric. He pets him harder. 

“He still has his dick, he doesn’t have his testicles, and mixing that up is actually how Shiroshima- the one who does Ragdolls over in Kashikku- finally got that fucking vet to lose his medical license.” 

_______  
After dinner and three rounds of poker Yuugi lies on his bed so his head is dangling off the side and thinks, rubbing his hand over the surface of the comforter. 

Before Izuku Yuugi had thought he had friends. Because the thing with friends was, you were always there for them. You did stuff for them, and you didn’t let them down, no matter what. And he remembers when he thought not letting his friends down meant his hair got pulled, his games got destroyed, and he got pushed into so many sensory meltdowns he disassociated for days. He thought that’s what you did. And when Jii-chan told him he couldn’t play with them he’d cried and begged with Jii-chan that they were his friends, then tried lying to Jii-chan about playing with them. It didn’t matter if they hurt him, however much they hurt him it was better than being alone. 

And Yuugi thinks, maybe, Izuku’s still in that place Yuugi was before Izuku. Even though Yuugi’s here. Maybe Izuku’s scared that if Bakugou’s not hurting him, he’s not looking at him, and he’ll be alone again. Which sounds so stupid and DUMB but emotions are involved so Yuugi’s pretty sure it actually is something like that. Yuugi doesn’t know how he can make Izuku see he’s not alone without a lot of yelling, especially since Yuugi is kind of angry Izuku NEEDS Yuugi to tell him that, and there’s already been too much yelling and not enough rice. Or growing rice? Yuugi doesn’t even know WHERE he’d grow rice, he knows it needs a lot of space and their backyard is tiny and Izuku lives in an apartment and also flooding the backyard would make the water bill too high even if it would be kind of cool to have fish out there. But then Ra would eat them. 

He stops rubbing the comforter and switches to poking the scab on his left arm. The dark scab bits have shrunk to almost nothing and are surrounded by dark pink. It’s probably going to scar but at least it looks like it’ll be a cool scar. Bumpy scars feel more interesting than flat scars, anyway. 

His phone vibrates. 

****

**AllMightFan11131  
** do u know anything about neurotransmitters?  
there’s this one called dopamine?  
i thought it was just a quirk thing because I’ve seen it w quirk stuff but like it does a bunch of stuff???  
i think?  
lot of words I don’t understand  
i will!  
i’m making a new notebook series!

**KingofGames**  
Aren’t neurotransmitters that thing that kills your brain????

**AllMightFan11131**  
what no  
wait  
do u mean neuroTOXINS?  
those r different

**KingofGames**  
What was the one in the video game?  
And with the Australian octopus and snail? 

**AllMightFan11131**  
neuroTOXINS.  
dopamine isn’t a neurotoxin 

**KingofGames**  
What is it? 

**AllMightFan11131**  
it gets mentioned w a lot of quirk stuff and quirk drugs and drugs?  
Idk it looks like most of the studies on dopamine were funded bc of drug studies?  
u remember the drug trigger?

**KingofGames**  
No?

**AllMightFan11131**  
the fight u wandered into last thursday and the one on monday? 

**KingofGames**  
OH.  
Those fights got WEIRD.  
Also gross.  
Bones aren’t supposed to do that. 

**AllMightFan11131**  
Yeah trigger’s kinda weird and gross  
it’s becoming a BIG problem  
so the stuff it does w making someone’s quirk mutate and get super powerful?  
there’s like, four major pathways that dopamine has in the brain and most drug stuff just involves one?  
drugs like meth or heroin  
but trigger seems to make dopamine move on two DIFFERENT pathways than the heroin/meth ones  
there’s not enough neuroscience info w dopamine and quirks bc of funding stuff  
and a lot of unethical human experimentation?  
like a lot  
so most dopamine stuff available is about how quirks and dopamine interact w the parts of the brain that deal w addiction or addictive drug stuff because they CAN get funding on that  
not the parts of the brain that it actually IS working on  
so not enough info on how trigger works and what’s happening to the quirk factor or how  
and people are showing up at hospitals after using it and they can do scans and blood work but nothing controlled like they really need  
also found some articles talking about long term damage to the things that make dopamine from using trigger but can’t confirm  
more studies needed

**KingofGames**  
so you learned about dopamine because you were looking at trigger?

**AllMightfan11131**  
…no  
still trying to understand the limbic system!  
but it kept mentioning dopamine and quirks and quirk factor  
and a lot of links

**KingofGames**  
Anything interesting and not-quirk? 

**AllMightFan11131**  
article about dopamine and card games? 

**KingofGames**  
link? 

Izuku sends it. Yuugi sits up to read it, and OW, blood moving and poking as it moves, that was a long time to spend upside down. The article’s complicated and the kind of thing Yuugi would probably never try to read on his own but because it’s stuff Izuku is talking about and picked out for him he’ll try and understand it. 

...Yuugi doesn’t care HOW MUCH he has to learn about rice in order to stay friends with Izuku. He’s going to figure this out. 

\----  
A week later Yuugi has learned A LOT about growing rice. And about raising fish with rice, because apparently most of the time people JUST raise rice, not fish, which seems kind of dumb but whatever. Hydroponics are actually super cool and while growing rice in the backyard still wouldn’t work it would be kind of neat to build a hydroponics set up with fish and tomatoes and scallions and stuff. Maybe he can convince Jii-chan next year, building one’s a lot of work. And he’d have to design a set up Ra couldn’t break into. 

Izuku had finally agreed to come over to meet Kuriboh. Kuriboh is still alive and getting bigger, and Tanaka-ba had set up a fence around their carrier for them to stumble around. Their tail is this tiny triangle and their paws are so shaky but Kuriboh is determined and keeps trying to climb the fence and failing miserably. Yuugi’s wondering how the fence will work once Kuriboh figures out jumping. Ra is sitting next to Yuugi and watching him with Kuriboh when Ra’s head snaps away and his ears flick back. Yuugi hears the knock a second later and gets up to let Izuku in.

It doesn’t hit Yuugi how long it’s been since he saw Izuku until he sees him in the entryway, but it’s been FOREVER. Probably the longest since they’ve been friends. He can’t help it, he hugs him, and after a moment Izuku hugs him back. It would be great except Izuku’s arms are stiff in a way Yuugi recognizes and when the hug ends and Izuku takes his All-Might jacket off Yuugi can see he’s wearing long sleeves. It’s cold out, but not that cold, and the fabric on the sleeves is bunching the way it does when Izuku’s wearing thicker bandages. 

Okay. Fuck this and fuck rice, Yuugi doesn’t CARE. “What Bakugou’s doing isn’t okay and I’m not GOING to be okay with it, and you’re my friend and I want you to keep being my friend but fuck that!” yells Yuugi, and braces himself for Izuku yelling back and this stupid fight continuing. 

Only Izuku doesn’t yell back. He just sort of… curls in on himself and stares at the ground, sort of the way Yuugi does when someone yells, and the angry feeling in his stomach twists into shame. He doesn’t want to make Izuku feel worse, he just wants this to STOP and he’s messing it up. 

“I talked to my mom,” says Izuku really quietly. He’s still staring at the ground. “After we um, after the fight. And it’s. It’s too late in the school year now, but for middle school. Mom’s.” Yuugi can see Izuku’s hands tighten where they’re curled around his arms. “Mom’s going to make sure we’re in different classes.”

Yuugi doesn’t know what to say. “That’s- that’s good, right?” 

“I know you don’t get it,” says Izuku, still in that quiet voice. “But he’s- he was- we were going to be heroes together.” 

“You still can?” 

Izuku shakes his head, still staring at the floor. “It’s not the same. You didn’t know Kacchan, back when we were little. Back when we promised we’d be heroes. He’s- I miss him,” says Izuku, and oh no, he’s crying. “I miss him but I don’t know how to meet that Kacchan again.” 

Yuugi hugs him because he can’t think of anything else to do. Izuku’s stiff but then he uncurls his arms and grabs Yuugi. He’s still crying and Yuugi’s shirt is going to be gross but it’s okay. Izuku can get as many of his shirts gross as he needs. 

“I’m going to go to Yuuei with you,” says Yuugi, and great, now he’s crying too. “I’m not leaving. I’m not going to be a hero with you but I’m not leaving, okay? So you don’t get to leave either.” 

“Okay,” whispers Izuku. They stand like that for a bit until the gross feeling on his shirt is REALLY gross and also Izuku’s hair keeps poking his eyes. Yuugi lets go first and Izuku holds on for a few seconds longer before stepping back. “Sorry I yelled that stuff, last time.” 

Yuugi wipes at his face. “It really hurt but it was like it hurt you too? Just like. Tell me before it hurts that much.”

“I’ll try. I’m sorry.” 

He notices Ra standing near the entryway, staring up at them with an unimpressed look. Tanaka-ba comes in a moment later with her tablet and an equally unimpressed look. “Hi,” she says in her ‘why are there crying children in my house and how do I make it happen somewhere else’ voice. 

“He’s here to meet Kuriboh?” tries Yuugi, wiping at his face again. His nose is still leaking, he wishes there were tissues in the entryway. Or that he had a handkerchief. He hates handkerchiefs because you’re supposed to carry them around after you make them gross with snot and spit but one would be REALLY useful right now. 

Tanaka-ba sighs, vanishes into the next room, and comes back with a tissue box she tosses at Izuku. He catches it, takes a bunch of tissues, and passes it to Yuugi. “I thought you were calling the kitten Kuri.”

“…they like it when I hoot back at them, so I added the noise to their name.” She’d told him not to name the kitten so he’d been trying to be sneaky, but apparently he’s still really bad at it. 

She sighs again. “Kuriboh’s not Trash Bag the Magnificent the Second or Slifer the Executive Producer, it’s not the worst name a registered cat can have.” 

“They can stay Kuriboh?” 

“Not naming the cat was supposed to make it easier for you not to get attached, but you’ve never made anything in your life easy ever. Both of you, go wash up before you show him Kuriboh.” 

Izuku follows him into the kitchen and they both wash their hands and throw out the tissues. Yuugi would like tissues a lot more if they didn’t do the ripping thing when they got wet and little bits of them didn’t stick to his hands. Izuku’s eyes get really wide when he sees Kuriboh and Kuriboh makes a curious hooting noise at Izuku and tries, again, to climb the fence towards freedom. Ra wanders back into the room, squats next to Yuugi, and glares at Izuku as Izuku pets Kuriboh and coos. 

After a while Tanaka-ba wanders into the room. “Izuku. Talked to a friend who runs a dojo, she says if you’re still interested after you start junior high she’s willing to train you.” 

Izuku turns really red and looks like he might start crying again, but stops himself. “Really? She- she’d be willing to train me even if I can’t use a quirk?” 

“She trains for quirk restricted MMA fighting and cage fights, she could not give one flying fuck about whether or not you have a quirk as long as you aren’t punching anyone in the dick. So don’t punch anyone in the dick.” She considers. “Or the throat. Don’t punch anyone in the throat unless they’re trying to kill you. Or you think they might be trying to kill you, not everyone’s clear about that.” 

“Is junior high late to start training?” 

“You’re in primary school, only an asshole has anyone training in primary school. Junior high is plenty of time. I know one kid who only decided to take the Yuuei exam the week before.”

Izuku’s eyes are huge. “And he got into Yuuei like that???”

“Got in, yeah. Stayed in, no. Idiot got expelled before the Sports Festival for slacking, but then got his shit together and went to Shiketsu. Passed the licensing exam on his third try and now he’s a search and rescue hero over in Hokkaido.”

“You’d never get expelled for slacking,” says Yuugi, because Izuku wouldn’t. “So if he could get in, you will too.” 

Izuku stares down at Kuriboh, who’s on their back and pawing at Izuku’s shirt. There’s a small smile on his face. It’s not his loud bright smile but it still makes something in Yuugi’s chest feel warm. 

_------  
Yuugi pokes his chopsticks at his dinner. Tonight’s ginger pork, which is tasty but Yuugi doesn’t really like making it because he has to grate a LOT of ginger, and he always worries he’ll catch his fingers on the grater. He’d rather cut the meat up but Jii-chan won’t let him use knives with raw meat until he’s thirteen. 

“How’s Izuku?” asks Jii-chan. “Did you and he finally make up?” 

Yuugi jerks his head up from his dinner and stares at him. “You knew Izuku and I were fighting?” 

Jii-chan just stares back at him. Yuugi sighs and slumps back into his chair. Okay, probably it was kind of dumb to think he could hide that from Jii-chan. “Yeah.” 

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“I am!” 

“Then do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”

Yuugi pokes at his pork again. “So.” He tries to figure out how to start the next part. “So. Um. It’s. So Izuku wants to go to Yuuei for high school?”

“He’s wanted to be a hero since before he could walk. I’m not surprised.”

Yuugi nods. He stares at the tablecloth, which is orange with brown and gold patterns. Frenzies? Reliefs? He can’t remember the word. “Yeah. And. So.” 

“Are you worried about him becoming a hero?” 

Yuugi shakes his head, bites his lip, and keeps his eyes on the table. He takes a deep breath. “Did my father go to Yuuei?” 

There’s a long silence from Jii-chan. “No,” he says finally. “Shiketsu.” 

Yuugi exhales and keeps staring at the tablecloth. “Okay.” 

Jii-chan reaches across the table and rests his hand on top of Yuugi’s head. Yuugi closes his eyes and leans into it, focuses on breathing. Neither of them say anything for a while. 

Finally Yuugi opens his eyes and leans back, though he keeps staring at the tablecloth. “So I want to go to Yuuei too, if Izuku’s going.” 

“Support or General Education?” 

Yuugi thinks about it, and pokes at his dinner with his chopsticks again. “I don’t know enough about either department? Just not Heroics.” 

“Don’t play with your food. Keep your grades up and maybe I can talk to your teachers about testing into a higher math class, that might help. I have no problem with Yuuei as long as you also apply to some backup schools.” 

“Not Shiketsu.”

“Alright. Not Shiketsu. But if you want to go to high school with Izuku, make sure you two apply to the same backup schools as well as the same first choice.” 

Yuugi nods. He finishes dinner and Jii-chan lets him cut up some persimmons for dessert, along with some early mikans, after Jii-chan checks his fingernails to make sure they aren’t tinged orange. He likes persimmons, fresh and dried. When they get cheap enough Jii-chan will buy a bunch of them and they can set them up in the backyard to turn into dried persimmons. 

“Blackjack?” offers Jii-chan, finishing off a persimmon segment. 

Jii-chan’s kept having them play poker over the past few weeks, and even though counting cards makes it easier he still prefers so many other games. Blackjack’s way better. And later thefuturelaughsfromtheceiling will probably be on the chess website so he can play some teaching games with them. “Yeah.”  
\----  
In early December Yuugi is heading to the canal for a walk when he runs into Ra. That’s not weird; Ra is very good at breaking out of Tanaka-ba’s house, and likes meeting Yuugi on the way back from a hunt to show Yuugi what he’s killed or getting pets as he patrols the neighborhood. What is weird is that this time, Ra has a tiny shadow with him. A tiny, brown, fluffy shadow that is absolutely not supposed to be outside and is dragging a bright yellow-spotted orange koi in his mouth that’s about twice his size and looking very proud. “Ra,” says Yuugi desperately. “Ra. You can’t teach him how to break out, he’s going to wander off and get lost and get eaten by a tanuki!” 

Ra stares back at him, unrepentant. Yuugi knows that usually kittens learn how to hunt from their moms but Kuriboh’s mom still doesn’t want anything to do with him, and apparently Ra has decided Yuugi isn’t going to do it and taken it upon himself to teach Kuriboh. He leans over and licks Kuriboh’s forehead, still staring at Yuugi. Kuriboh drops the fish next to Yuugi’s shoes and hoots happily, his tail quivering. 

Yuugi stares at the fish. The expensive, mature fish. “You can’t teach him to go after koi, someone spent a lot of time and money on that fish! Can’t you just teach him with mice?” No one likes mice except the people who keep mice as pets and Yuugi’s pretty sure Ra wouldn’t break into someone’s house just to eat their pet. Unless they kept the mice in the backyard? He bends down and pets Kuriboh, who trills at him. “You can’t teach him bad things. He’s gonna get adopted somewhere and then he’s going to go around breaking out of buildings and stealing fish and he’ll get in a lot of trouble!” 

Ra responds by leaning over and starting to eat the fish, which jerks, and okay, no, Yuugi doesn’t need to watch this. He covers his face and wishes, briefly, that Tanaka-ba raised rabbits instead of cats. Maybe Flemish Giants. Rabbits didn’t seem like they’d break out of houses and go kill things. Like, he could be wrong, hippos are herbivores like rabbits and they’re total jerks and murder machines. But most of the time raising rabbits probably involved a minimum of dead things. 

“Hi Yuugi-kun!” says a familiar female voice. Yuugi uncovers his face. It’s Tanaka-ba’s niece (Koyama? Tayama? WHY IS HE SO BAD AT NAMES). She’s wearing normal clothes so Yuugi doesn’t have to try so hard not to look at her boobs, and carrying a bag with an omiyage box with the words TAKASHIMA on it. 

“Hi.” 

She stares at the scene by his feet, which he’s still trying Very Hard to ignore. “Well, someone’s going to be mad about that koi.” 

“Pretty sure it’s one of Kinryou-san’s,” says Yuugi, resigned. “He told Tanaka-ba he’d skin Ra if Ra got into his fish again. He bought netting for his pond and everything.” 

“Glad the demon cat is living up to his reputation. Does the baby demon cat have a name?”

“Kuriboh’s not a demon cat! Ra’s just teaching him because I keep spending time with Kuriboh so Ra’s spending time with him so I’ll spend more time with him.” Kuriboh doesn’t need formula anymore but he gets sad if Yuugi doesn’t come by every day so Yuugi’s still spending a lot of time at Tanaka-ba’s house with him. 

Kuriboh trots over to Tanaka-ba’s niece, holding a piece of fish in his mouth, and drops it at her feet before hooting at her. She blinks but leans down and carefully pets his head. Kuriboh purrs and leans into her hand. “Well, aren’t you a sweetheart even if you keep terrible company. Does my aunt know Ra’s taking her kittens on field trips?” 

“No. I should take him back. He’s not supposed to be outside, he hasn’t had his rabies shot yet.” 

“Speaking of, how’s your arm doing? No other reactions?” 

“It’s fine.” Apparently there’d been something weird about the flu vaccine he and Izuku got. They’d had to go to a specialist downtown and get blood drawn and there’d been extra paperwork Jii-chan had to fill out about his earlier reaction. He didn’t really get the fuss; he guessed the batch had been bad so it wasn’t as effective, or something. The mark had faded fully into a scar, and he had been right, it does look and feel really cool. It forms a curve with a sort of bulb in the center, and if he squints at it right it kind of looks like an eye. 

“Well, if anything else happens with it, make sure to follow up with your doctor.” 

Yuugi frowns at her. “Why do you keep saying that? It was just a flu shot.” 

She has that weird look on her face, AGAIN. “Some people had very bad reactions to the vaccine, some of them very delayed. My aunt would be very sad if anything happened with you.” She tilts her head. “I might be sad too, if someone remembered my name.” 

EVERY TIME. “…Koyama?” he tries, without much hope. 

“Kayama Nemuri, Ka-ya-ma, you’re such a sweet boy other than this, why are you so bad with names?” 

Yuugi slumps. “I don’t know, you’re Tanaka-ba’s niece. That’s way more important than you being Kayama Nemuri.” 

“I can’t tell if I should be insulted or flattered by that,” she says thoughtfully. “Probably a little bit of both. I’m heading to take some souvenirs to my aunt. How about you bring the little chestnut back and escort me?”

Ra grumbles at him when he picks up Kuriboh but seems to accept the field trip is over. Kuriboh stinks like fish and Yuugi resigns himself to doing laundry tonight. He likes his jacket, it’s comfy and purple, it doesn’t need fishy smells. Kuriboh fusses until Yuugi starts petting him and then he forgets to complain as they walk. He’s an excellent snuggle cat, whoever gets him had better snuggle him a lot.

“Now, my aunt said you were doing an excellent job with this chestnut. Why don’t you tell me what else you’ve been up to?”  
____  
A few weeks after New Years Izuku gets the flu. It always sucks getting the flu after getting a flu shot but that’s a risk with them, and Yuugi guesses whatever weirdness was going on with the flu shots they got probably impacted how effective the one they got was anyway. Normally it’d just mean Izuku misses a week of school and sends him nine million text messages but something goes wrong and Izuku winds up at the ER because his fever’s too high. Yuugi doesn’t find out about the ER until two days later when Izuku texts him after getting discharged and he kind of freaks out a little. Jii-chan refuses to let him visit Izuku to see he’s okay and makes Yuugi let Jii-chan check his temperature every morning for a week. Which is dumb, if he got infected by Izuku he’s infected and it’s not like he can get UNSICK with the flu. 

Jii-chan is the next person to get sick, with a cold. Jii-chan keeps telling him it’s a cold and not the flu, but after Izuku having to go to the ER Yuugi can’t stop thinking about what would happen if Jii-chan did get really sick and didn’t get better. And he still can’t meet up with Izuku because Izuku’s recovering and maybe still contagious, and his brain is moving too much so he can’t really sleep, which makes his brain move MORE which makes it even worse. 

Wednesday the anxiety and tiredness form into a headache that bleeds across his forehead and ears and he gives up and tries going to bed early. He has weird dreams that don’t stick in his brain and in the morning the headache’s STILL there. There’s a test he doesn’t want to miss and Jii-chan’s already exhausted from being sick and working so he gives up and gets ready for school. He tries eating some toast for breakfast but his stomach feels weird and he’s not that hungry. Jii-chan has him pack it up to eat later that morning. He layers a jacket on under his coat as he heads out; it’s colder than yesterday. 

He’s exhausted by the time he gets to school. Thankfully he didn’t run into any stupid hero or villain fights, he thinks he’d just sit down and start crying if that happened today. His head keeps hurting and stuff feels fuzzy around the edges. He manages to focus on the test but he keeps zoning out, and he doesn’t get why the classroom feels so cold. Usually the heating works better. 

They’re supposed to go outside for recess and Yuugi thinks maybe he wants to just stay inside in the quiet room. He stands up and everything starts turning to static. He grabs his desk but the static doesn’t clear, it spreads, and he blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the running rules of the boku no hero academia universe is that quirks come with a cost. Izuku breaking his bones like glowsticks after he gets ofa, AIzawa's dry eye whenever he stops someone's quirk, Aoyama collapsing his abdominal wall if he overuses his stomach laser, etc. A little different from the Yugioh universe, where I would argue the consequences of accessing the Shadow Games are that you CAN access the Shadow Games rather than the price you pay to be able to access them. So the path to Yami/Atem showing up is unfortunately going to come with a different kind of cost than spending eight years solving a puzzle. 
> 
> I wrote the first quarter of this chapter in two weeks, then didn't write anything for about a month; i still really, really hate writing conflict between two characters who like each other even if it's about RESOLVING the conflict. When I moved up and rearranged how i wanted the fallout to work out it got much easier. 
> 
> I definitely think that being in different classes would have made things easier for Izuku, but that would have also required him acknowledging how much Bakugou's behaviour was hurting him and talking to his mom about what was going on. And I think, canonically, he didn't necessarily have the same frame of reference he has in this story to be able to say "I can't fix this and I need to ask for help." Which is a really hard thing to do, when you're a kid and the person who used to be your best friend treats you like garbage. Izuku realizing he needed to address the Bakugou situation was one major factor in why he blew up at Yuugi last chapter when Yuugi was pushing about Bakugou. Of course, things are never solved THAT easily, right? :)
> 
> Using the Kuriboh spelling instead of Kuribou hurts me a little inside (i have Opinions about how the Japanese long o sound gets written in English) but it looks wrong without the h, so here we are. 
> 
> Please take a moment to look up videos of three and four week old kittens walking. IT IS THE BEST. 
> 
> So, the fact that I am using flu vaccines as a plot device in my fic doesn't change the fact that vaccines save lives and the flu can and does kill people every year. Please do not use this fictional story about people with magical genetic powers as a reason to avoid getting vaccinated. 
> 
> Jonouchi should show up in the next chapter. Yami/Atem is 2 to 3 chapters out, depending on how this works. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	8. for want of a nail (butterflies flapping their wings in china)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery is a verb.

_the room is familiar and quiet and safe the toys on the floor the games on the shelves the chess set on the table_  
not safe   
not quiet   
the handle on the door rattling   
move the door? (the door flickers) no there has to be a door there has to be a door there has to be a door there has to be a door  
the room is supposed to be familiar and quiet and safe  
the room is supposed to be his  
the room is supposed to be His  
the room is supposed to be HIS  
(MINE)  
the handle is still  
Something moves (outside) the room. 

Yuugi doesn’t remember the first week in the hospital. Doesn’t sound like he's missing much, apparently all he did was a have a high fever and one, maybe two febrile seizures. Yuugi’s not sure how you miss a seizure, especially since he was just lying in bed. Also his blood pressure spiked, and there was a lot of concern about his blood doing stuff. Like exploding out of his veins. Which was not something Yuugi had ever worried about his blood doing but is apparently REALLY common and that’s actually what it means when someone has a stroke or a heart attack or that thing that starts with an a that makes him think of peeing. 

He remembers most of the second week. He still had a fever but it was lower and he was in a regular hospital room. His head wouldn’t stop hurting and everything was too loud and too bright and strange and he didn’t like the food, or how the nurses kept waking him up whenever he finally did fall asleep. Mostly he remembers how much it sucked. MRIs and the other imaging tests sucked, the headaches sucked, the nausea sucked, and trying all the new meds sucked. Something on the tests made them think his quirk was overactive so they tried treating his headaches with quirk suppressants, which was how they found out he’s in the point five percent of the population that gets nausea and headaches from quirk suppressants. And it turns out taking something that causes nausea and headaches when you’re already having nausea and headaches means you spend a lot of time puking with a migraine. For all Yuugi had thought about how neat it would be to projectile vomit like a sea cucumber, he hadn’t realized just how much it HURT, especially if you kept doing it. 

Yuugi also remembers Jii-chan being there for a lot of the second week but that wasn’t really better because Jii-chan was scared and sad even though he was pretending like he wasn’t. And Yuugi’s always been terrible at being sick, it makes him miserable and annoyed and he can’t pretend he doesn’t feel that way even when other people need him to, and there was nowhere in the hospital he could be alone. The doctors kept saying his blood pressure was too high and something about hypertension, which is different from being tense but kind of involves being stressed, and wanted to keep him until he was less hypertense. He could pay enough attention to tell Jii-chan had multiple arguments with different doctors about how being at the hospital was making him more stressed, and each doctor wanted more, different tests to confirm he was stressed instead of just ASKING him, and he knew he should’ve pretended he was feeling better so they’d let him leave but he was just so exhausted. 

He FINALLY got to go home even if Jii-chan had to agree to bring him back for more tests, but by that point Yuugi would’ve set his game collection on fire if it meant he could sleep in his own bed. Which he does, for sixteen hours straight, the longest he has ever slept in his life. He tries and fails to finish a bowl of rice porridge before he’s exhausted again and has to lie down. 

The problem wasn’t that he’s sick at this point so much as how exhausted he is from being sick. It’s the blank, bone deep exhaustion that hits him after a meltdown or being surrounded by crowds, only now it feels like his baseline. The headaches make it worse, even if the meds have shifted the headaches from a sharp twisting noise into a weird, fuzzed out pressure. Having to leave the house for more tests or to see his pediatrician doesn’t help, he’s in tears before they even get to the appointment and twice as exhausted whenever they make it back home. His pediatrician gives him some comfortable sunglasses that help a little, and makes a referral to a specialist in the same building who gets him a temporary pair of some adjustable ear plugs while designing him a custom set, and he’d find them super cool if he was feeling better but for now he’s just. So. Tired. 

And there’s this other, weirder pressure in his head he can’t figure out how to describe to the doctors. It’s the sea anemone feeling, like he’s waiting for something to happen, only now there’s someone there as he waits. It doesn’t feel like he’s being watched except it does, and even if the whatever doing the watching is being polite about it and not purple officer judging him for wandering into an active crime scene, it’s still tiring and another New Thing he has to get used to. 

He never really wants visitors when he’s sick but Tanaka-ba swings by with Kuriboh the first week he’s home and it’s not like he could tell Kuriboh he didn’t want to see him. Especially since Kuriboh’s response on seeing him was to yowl, jump onto his lap, and start pacing around him while hooting in a long, chittering stream like he’s lecturing. “I didn’t want to be sick,” Yuugi says while petting him, wincing at the noise. Petting him at least makes the noise a little softer, and he stops pacing in favor of settling and grumbling in Yuugi’s lap. Tanaka-ba stays quiet as Kuriboh settles himself. He can’t read her face; another thing that’s harder right now. “You scared a lot of people, you brat,” she says finally. Her voice is lower than usual. “How are you feeling? Actual answer, not the polite one.”

“My head hurts, everything’s too loud and too bright, and I’m tired but sleeping doesn’t make me less tired.” 

She sits on the edge of his bed. “Being home help?”

He focuses on how soft Kuriboh’s fur is, on the vibration he can feel in his chest from his purrs and the hoots. “Yeah. It’s quieter here. Everyone kept waking me up.”

“Hospitals are terrible places to sleep unless you’re in a coma or drugged out of your mind.” She doesn’t say anything else. Yuugi keeps looking at Kuriboh. 

When he was little Tanaka-ba had said something about why she wanted to be an aunt to the neighborhood kids instead of a sister or grandma. Part of growing up meant learning a lot of painful and sad things, but being a parent meant it was hard to teach your children those things. So it was the role of aunts and uncles to make sure you learned all the truths your parents loved you too much to want you to know. He fidgets with the edge of his purple weighted blanket. “So. Um. Jii-chan’s still really… spiky. And um. The thing- I don’t- can you tell me what happened?” 

“…They didn’t explain at the hospital?”

They had talked about it, but everything was in pieces and everyone seemed to assume Yuugi knew how to put the pieces together or where to find the missing parts. “Some. Not really. I was sick, and my quirk was doing stuff, and the stuff was making me sicker?” 

Tanaka-ba doesn’t say anything, just exhales. And then she explains. 

The batch of vaccine he and Izuku received had been contaminated. They still weren’t sure what with, or how, but the contaminant seemed similar to the drug Trigger. But it was something that messed with quirk pathways even worse than Trigger, and while the reaction hadn’t happened in everyone who was exposed, a lot of the people who had had a reaction, had. Died. Mostly by aneurysm, or stroke. That was why they’d kept Yuugi in the hospital so long, and why they were so worried his blood pressure had stayed high. They didn’t know why the reaction had taken so long to show up with some people, or if something could retrigger the reaction, or what the long term consequences of the reaction might be. 

Kuriboh’s fallen asleep in his lap. Yuugi keeps looking at him. “How many people died?”

“293 was the count back in early December. They thought it ended then.” 

293 people are dead. He could have been 294. He might still be. He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Tanaka-ba swears and gets up, sits next to him and wraps her arms around him. She’s bad at hugging but she doesn’t squash Kuriboh. She smells like cat and tea and wet cat litter and they’re familiar, real smells, not hospital or sick smells, and he breathes them in as he’s shaking and not really crying, he doesn’t have the energy to cry but his eyes keep running. He focuses on those smells, on Kuriboh’s vibrations, and slowly his body lets him be still. 

“Sorry,” he says when words want to work again. “You hate crying.” 

“You almost died, you get a crying pass.” Tanaka-ba pulls away and hands him the box of tissues by the bed. He still can’t read her face but it’s probably relieved she can move away from his dripping. “Don’t get used to it.” 

He wipes his face off as Kuriboh makes a weird sleepy hoot and shifts in his lap. Suddenly he realizes something. “That was why your niece kept asking me about the vaccination thing!” 

“Nemuri, and yeah. A few of her coworkers were involved with some of the earliest cases.” She reaches into her bag. “Also, she got something for you.” 

She hands him a flat, wrapped package that looks like a book. He blinks at it. His eyes are heavy. “Why?”

She thumps his hair with the arm not holding the package, softly enough he barely feels it. “You worried her, you idiot. Also I think she’s hoping if she gives you something you like enough your brain will upgrade her from my niece to Kayama or Nemuri. Probably she’d even settle for Midnight.” 

He takes the package and puts it on the bed, trying not to move Kuriboh. “Um. Can you tell her thank you?” 

“Will do. Write her a thank you note if you can, she’s been threatening to visit you.” 

Yuugi does not need any more people visiting him, and honestly wishes Tanaka-ba had waited a few more days even if she brought Kuriboh, but at least now he knows what’s going on. Sort of. And he has a new book? He starts leaning forward, but jerks himself back up and pets Kuriboh again. “So um. When’s Kuriboh leaving? He’s getting old to adopt as a kitten.” 

“Why don’t you talk to Sugoroku about that? Odds are he’ll love a topic that doesn’t involve your immune system trying to eat you.” 

Technically he thinks it was his parasympathetic nervous system, not his immune system, but brain stuff IS complicated and he could be wrong. Also Yuugi doesn’t know why Jii-chan would know anything about Kuriboh but all they’ve talked about since he got back is basically him being sick, something different would be nice. His eyes drift shut. “Okay.” He feels Tanaka-ba pick up Kuriboh and he leans over so he’s lying down and not sitting and falls asleep. 

When he wakes up he sees someone moved the book-shaped gift to the floor next to his bed. He leans over and picks it up. It feels like a large paperback book. He locates the tape on the wrapping paper - ripping paper FEELS good but he doesn’t want the noise- and carefully peels it off so he can open it. It IS a book, a large one with pictures and a glossy cover, titled How Things Come Together. It shows photos of things like a tv or computer, then photos of what they look like inside, then photos of the parts removed and organized, then a... blueprint drawing? What’s it called. Schema? Schematic? He flips through the book, fascinated. There’s also entries on cell phones, an mp3 player, a cd player, and a pager. There’s a note in the book at the front saying “Focus on healing and get better! Nemuri-nee.” The message is in regular pen while the name is in permanent marker and underlined twice. 

…Okay, seriously, he NEEDS to remember her name, this is SUPER COOL and he LOVES IT.   
\------  
Yuugi brings up Kuriboh a few days later when he’s downstairs on the couch. The soft purple blanket is on his lap and his purple weighted blanket is around his shoulders and he’s trying to work on the giant pile of homework Izuku brought. Izuku hasn’t technically visited because Yuugi doesn’t want him to, but he’s texted Yuugi almost every day he was in the hospital even if Yuugi couldn’t respond, and has been going to Yuugi’s school and picking up his homework to give to Jii-chan. Jii-chan is sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop instead of being at the game shop, even though the game shop is on the same block and the store’s already been closed too much. Yuugi’s gotten an okay start on his math homework but with his kanji homework he needs to be able to memorize and his brain doesn’t want to memorize things very well right now. 

He stares at the butsudan in the corner. It’s been open and set up since Yuugi came home. Jii-chan has some early plum blossoms and pine branches in front of it, along with a bowl of mikans and chestnuts. He knows his grandmother had loved roasting chestnuts and ginkgo nuts, and his mom had loved eating them. He thinks his grandmother used her quirk with them the way Jii-chan does with rolled omelets. It’s really late in the season for chestnuts, though. 

“Hey Jii-chan?” 

“Yes?”

“Tanaka-ba said I should ask you about Kuriboh?” 

“She didn’t talk about him with you?”

Yuugi shakes his head, then realizes Jii-chan can’t see him. Also shaking your head is hard when you’re wearing a weighted blanket. “She said it could be something to talk about besides being sick, also I fell asleep.” 

“Well then,” says Jii-chan. Yuugi can hear him get up and come into the living room. He settles on the other side of the couch- Yuugi needs a lot of space today. “You like Kuriboh.” 

“He loves snuggling and he hoots like a little owl and his tail does this shakey thing when he’s excited or happy like he’s stimming, he is an AWESOME cat and whoever adopts him is going to be super lucky,” says Yuugi firmly. Yuugi doesn’t get to keep him and that’s okay, he’s not going to be sad about losing Kuriboh because Kuriboh’s alive and healthy and he’s going to live a long life with someone who will take great care of him and love him. Tanaka-ba won’t let anyone adopt her cats if they can’t. And maybe whoever adopts him will be nearby and might be okay with him wanting to see him sometimes. 

“Do you want him?” 

His brain stops. “Huh?” 

“Netsuko doesn’t want to stud him, which decreases his value or his use as a show cat. He already likes you, and her demon cat likes him, which is a prerequisite for any pet you adopt if we’re living in the neighborhood. And you like him.” 

Inside the white noise that’s currently his brain, Yuugi wants to protest the demon cat thing. Ra is NOT a demon, he’s just very determined, and when he dies he’s going to turn into a Matatabi and Yuugi will leave offerings for him to watch over the household to PREVENT him from turning into a demon. But that’s a very small voice because KURIBOH. He can keep Kuriboh??? That’s an option, that’s a thing he can do that Jii-chan and Tanaka-ba will LET him do and are okay with??? He pulls the weighted blanket over his head with both hands. “We can keep him??”

“Louder, I can’t hear you,” says Jii-chan, kind of muffled. 

He raises his voice. “We can keep him???”

“Once you’re well enough to clean the litterbox and as long as you agree to clean it every day. I’m too old to clean litterboxes.” 

“How are you too old?” 

“My knees are delicate and I have tenure.” 

“Wait,” says Yuugi, lifting the blanket and staring at Jii-chan. “Wait. You took a lot of time off from the store because I was sick, you’re not back yet-“

“-Yuugi-”

“-and even if Tanaka-ba isn’t selling him as a breeding cat Angoras are still expensive, and that’s her JOB, she SHOULD get money from them-“

“-Yuugi-” 

“-and she shouldn’t lose money but that’s a lot of money and if you’re not working-“ 

“Blanket back over your head.” 

Yuugi pulls the blanket back over his head. He’s breathing too quick and his head is throbbing. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the weight of the blanket and the feel of the fabric clutched in his hands.

“It’s not your job to worry about our finances. If there was an issue you needed to know, I would tell you. 

“But-“

“Nope, no buts. Being here is more important to me than being at the store.”

Yuugi feels himself rocking back and forth a little. He knows they have money, but most of the money is tied up in long term investments or specialty items that always seem super complicated to sell, and most of his medical stuff is covered but there’s still copays. He doesn’t like being so expensive. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s my job to take care of you. I can afford to take the time off and I can afford to add a cat to the household.”

“...We can really keep Kuriboh?”

“When you’re able to take care of him, yes. Think of it like this- the sooner you can take care of him, the less time Ra has to teach him things.” 

Yuugi stops rocking and opens his eyes to the weird purple hue stuff has when his light is filtering through a thick purple blanket. “Um.” 

“Still want him?” 

“…Kinryou-san’s kind of a jerk anyway.”   
____  
Considering how easy it is to get sick recovery takes way too long. The meds keep the headaches manageable and Yuugi or Jii-chan can’t really get an answer about when they’ll stop. Maybe they won’t. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. His blood pressure is still too high so he’s also taking a med for that, and Jii-chan’s switched to low sodium soy sauce and adding less salt when he cooks. It’s still hard to eat; he lost weight and food doesn’t feel very interesting, especially with less salt. 

Izuku visits. He starts crying and then Yuugi starts crying and his headache gets worse, but he knew all of that would happen. He remembers how it felt when Izuku had the flu and he couldn’t see him, he knows Izuku needed to make sure he was okay. Izuku then tried to help him with homework but Yuugi somehow fell dead asleep and pinned him to the bed for forty minutes. Izuku said it was fine and he’d just scrolled through some news articles on his cellphone, but it still makes Yuugi want to curl up under his blanket nest and HIDE. Especially since the sleeping thing KEEPS happening with Izuku. Yuugi doesn’t know what about Izuku is making his brain decide it’s time to sleep especially since he’s always been terrible with naps BEFORE this, but his doctor and the specialists say it isn’t narcolepsy and that recovery means he needs a lot of sleep. Which Yuugi is fine with, just, could the sleep NOT happen on top of his friend???

He gets the custom ear plugs, which Izuku thinks are super cool, and Yuugi has to admit are neat. They’re a special noise cancelling design that can filter out different types of noise; high pitched noises, music, crowds etc. Being able to adjust them easily and quickly is going to take getting used to but Yuugi can at least go outside and in areas with people without having a meltdown. Keeping them in for too long kind of does bug his ears but the tight/itch feel is easier to ignore than needles/spike/discordant feel. With them and the sunglasses he manages to make it back to school three weeks before the quarter ends. He’s so glad they don’t do finals in primary school, the last thing he’d want to deal with after ALL of getting sick is having to repeat the year because he couldn’t study and catch up at the same time. Masaki-kun helps with other students overwhelming him; she’d been the one to get his homework and pass it to Izuku, and she keeps asking him how he’s doing or if he needs to sit down or go to the quiet room. Izuku had sent a lot of texts to Yuugi about her, mostly about how cool and amazing her quirk was, but also some saying that Masaki-kun was worried about him and kept grilling Izuku for any info. She’s really nice. Scary, but nice. 

Stuff is trying to reach a new normal. Some old normal is staying with the new normal. Some stuff that Yuugi maybe would have been happier STAYING old normal and not joining new normal. 

“It’s been a while, how are you feeling?” asks Officer Takebana. She’s standing next to Yuugi, who gave up and sat on the road ten minutes ago. He’s fiddling with his ear plugs and trying to turn off the right noises. “You gave everyone quite a fright.” 

“I’m doing a lot better,” says Yuugi, because he is, considering. “Be better if I could go home and nap.” 

She makes sympathetic noises but doesn’t say he can leave yet. 

He’d made it almost two weeks of going to school before this crap decided to happen again. He’d been walking back from school, which was still taking him about twice as long as it had before he got sick, even if he didn’t need to stop and rest on the walk anymore. He’d been thinking about a book, so he wandered down an alley that cut into a main street that had a bookstore with neat displays, and then he’d smelled the smoke and noticed the broken glass and, of course, it was the stupid fire hero again. What is it with him and property destruction? Someone has to clean all that up and repair it and it’s sure not Endeavour. 

He fiddles with the controls on his ear plugs again, trying to better filter out the crowd noises while not turning up the things burning noises, when suddenly a clear, angry voice comes through. He pauses, feels something in his stomach get very tight, and quickly twists the adjustment so the sound fades out. 

“Yuugi-kun?” 

Yuugi stares at the pavement. “…I want to go home.” The sea anemone feeling almost… pulses, behind his eyes, and for a moment it’s like he’s disassociating but not quite. 

“You know what? I think we can figure that out.” Officer Takebana’s voice sounds different. When he looks up she’s staring in the same direction he was listening from. He can’t tell for sure but he thinks her face is angry.   
___  
He only runs into two more villain attacks before graduation, and then somehow they’re done with primary school. He and Izuku go to one of the shrines for hanami during the few days they have off before junior high starts. His ear plugs help so, so much but he still gets overwhelmed almost immediately from the crowd and can’t browse any of the stalls. Izuku sets him up on a bench in a low traffic area outside of the shrine, vanishes into the throng, and comes back ten minutes later with a green tea soft-serve cone for Yuugi and a frozen chocolate banana for him. Yuugi always WANTS to like frozen chocolate bananas, he likes bananas and he likes chocolate, but the frozen ones are too hard. The sound of crunching on a frozen thing is also bad that sometimes becomes Bad but he scoots to the edge of the bench and tries to focus on his ice cream. Soft-serve is so good, it’s like, what most mushy stuff TRIES to be and fails. 

“So, so I was reading more about your ear plugs,” says Izuku, his voice kind of muffled because of the banana. Yuugi tries not to wince at the crunch and kind of succeeds. “And like, I don’t know how much you know about auditory protection but there’s actually been some really cool developments over the past ten years? Like the ear plugs you’re wearing used to only be available through two different Support companies who generally only sold to heroes or former heroes, even though they’re like, super useful to people with sensory processing issues or quirks that impact hearing or even just like, people working in loud environments who want to be able to communicate with their coworkers but still need ear protection? So there’s been an ongoing push for that technology to be on the public market instead of just Support company patented software and hardware, because there’s really a need.”

Yuugi nods. He’s glad it’s available, using the ear plugs is way easier than noise cancelling headphones, which always make his ears feel like he needs to pop them anyway. Also the ear plugs, which loop around his ear for support as well as being in his ear canal, came in a bunch of flesh tones so it was a lot easier if someone was trying to get people not to notice them. Noise cancelling headphones are like rocking or stimming, people notice it and then they notice you. (Yuugi still chose gold and purple for his, because gold and purple, but it was nice the option was there if he needed it). “Support tech shouldn’t just be for heroes,” he says, which he knows Izuku knows and agrees with, but he wants to say something other than just “yeah” or a nod. 

“Yeah, and actually one particular hero agreed with that and did a lot of copyright stuff and lobbying and is why it’s on the available market, and you want to guess which hero?” 

“All-Might?” 

“Present Mic!”

Yuugi stares at him, betrayed. Izuku grins back. Yuugi wants to also stare at his ears and the ear plugs in betrayal but can’t, because they’re on his head. And he’s definitely not going to try going to the bathroom to do it, he can’t remember if this is one of the shrines with mirrors in the bathroom (probably?) plus it’s on the other side of the complex from them. Maybe if he walked around? But then he’d have less energy to walk home. He settles for scowling and crossing his arms instead, which is awkward when you’re holding ice cream. He sulkily takes another lick. 

“He also helped get some proprietary software and hardware for specialized hearing aids released for public use, like, the stuff that’s on the market now is completely different from what was available ten years ago. I don’t know any heroes who have visual quirks the way Present Mic has an audio quirk, maybe if there was one they could do that type of lobbying for vision stuff, it would be neat to see what might actually be out there,” mumbles Izuku. He starts muttering something about mantis shrimp and ultraviolet wave lengths around his banana. 

Hearing aids are Yuugi’s opposite solution, the LAST thing he wants is something that makes him hear MORE. He winces again at the banana crunch sound. “Fine, he uses loud for Good, not Bad, he is still Too Loud and I want him to be loud VERY far away from me.” 

“I’m actually kind of amazed you haven’t run into him yet. He works at Yuuei and his radio station is in Mustaphu so probably you’ve wandered near a crime scene or a villain attack where he-“

“Wait,” interrupts Yuugi. “Wait. He WORKS at Yuuei? Meaning if we go to Yuuei, we’re going to be on the SAME campus as him?” 

Izuku’s face gets a weird look. For all Izuku’s a hero otaku he’s heard enough stories from Tanaka-ba about Present Mic to understand, at least a LITTLE, why being in the same area as a guy whose voice can make buildings explode might be something Yuugi WANTS TO AVOID, and also as nice as the hearing aid things Izuku’s been researching ARE, Izuku probably doesn’t want to need them firsthand. “He’s been a Pro-Hero for a long time at this point, and he’s supposed to have really good control. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Izuku tilts his head and frowns. “Um. As long as there’s no bugs?” 

Yuugi stares hopelessly at his ice cream. “Ketsubutsu’s also a really good hero school?” 

“Ketsubutsu can be one of our backups, we’re not passing up Yuuei because you don’t want to be near Present Mic if he runs into a bug,” says Izuku firmly. “Maybe we could practice squashing bugs if we see them inside or at school? So we could get bug squashing reflexes, and then if we run into them at Yuuei while Present Mic’s there we can squash them before he makes anything explode.”

Bugs make him think of lizards make him think of Seto, and he pushes around the ache from Seto to focus back on lizards. “Are support lizards a thing? Like, could Present Mic have a lizard he keeps with him and trains to eat bugs when he sees them?” 

“I don’t know if you can train lizards. Maybe a bird? There’s birds that eat bugs, and he said in an interview he really likes birds, just his schedule’s too busy for him to keep one.”

Yuugi doesn’t know much about taking care of birds, not like he does cats. “Ra eats house centipedes-“ 

“If it isn’t Deku and the spastic retard,” says a sneering voice that makes the bottom of Yuugi’s stomach drop. He turns away from a paling Izuku and of course it’s Bakugou, along with two other kids their age Yuugi doesn’t recognize. Now that he’s looking for it he can taste/smell the burnt-sweet tang of Bakugou’s sweat. Stupid, stupid, if he wasn’t eating the soft-serve he would have noticed sooner. The sea anemone feeling pushes, gently, against his brain. “What are you two freaks doing?” 

“I have higher math grades than you do,” says Yuugi, because one, he does, or at least he did before he was out for almost two months after almost dying, and two, he STILL can’t figure out how to make his mouth not say things when he’s stressed. 

Bakugou stomps forward and looms over Yuugi. Yuugi grips his soft serve cone and thinks about throwing it at him, but he still can’t run very well or move fast, and Bakugou won’t physically hurt Yuugi unless Yuugi does something first. “What was that, you spastic retard?” 

“Kacchan-“ 

Bakugou’s head snaps towards Izuku and his fists clench. All Yuugi can smell is that thick, burnt-sweet stink. “I said to stop calling me that!” 

“Stop calling him Deku first,” says Yuugi, because at least Izuku’s nickname for Bakugou is something a friend would actually use. He’d say more but then Bakugou’s fist clenches again and then SPARKS NOISE and his brain is an electric wire. The sea anemone/watching feeling SHOVES to the front of his brain and there’s NOISE and Yuugi knows he’s shaking, knows his fingernails are digging into his scalp around his ear plugs and there are three of him, the sea anemone feeling/ the him watching/ the him that isn’t there as his body responds. The sea anemone feelings SHOVES, again, and for a moment the lost time/black out feeling almost…. flickers? 

And then Yuugi is Yuugi again, in his body, a body that’s on the ground by the bench, with drool and snot on his face and ice cream on his pants and that disgusting burnt-sweet smell everywhere. Someone’s yelling- Izuku? His headache throbs and he gags, the smell clinging to the inside of his mouth. He can’t help it, he pukes, and the acid sweet taste of the soft-serve coming back up is enough like the burnt-sweet smell he immediately pukes again. Izuku’s on the ground next to him and muttering; he tries to focus on the muttering as the shaking slows. “Sorry,” he tells Izuku when he can talk again. His head HURTS. 

Izuku helps him back up onto the bench, gets a bottle of water from somewhere and hands it to Yuugi along with a package of tissues. Yuugi takes a drink and wets the tissues, carefully, and wipes his face. He tries to wipe his pants but the tissue rips and it mostly just smears the stain. “I’m sorry,” he says again. Bakugou and the two other boys are gone. He doesn’t know when they left. He tries to look Izuku over and doesn’t see any burns. 

“Don’t,” says Izuku in a low voice. “Don’t- don’t apologize.” Izuku’s shaking, Yuugi realizes. “Kacchan- Kacchan had no right to do that to you. He knows how much his explosions hurt you.” Izuku’s hands are in fists. His knuckles are white. “You didn’t- you just stood up for me and-“ He starts crying and wipes at his face jerkily with one hand. His other hand reaches for Yuugi’s and grabs it, hard. “I’m going to become a hero. I’m going to become a hero, and no one, no one, is going to do that to you again.” 

Yuugi’s too blank from his meltdown and puking and headache to really feel anything, but he squeezes Izuku’s hand back as tightly as he can. He doesn’t know how long they sit there. Neither of them let go until Yuugi’s ready to try walking again. 

\----  
Jii-chan is angrier than Yuugi’s ever seen. The spikiness of the anger mixes with the jagged bits that are still there from him being sick and Yuugi has to hide upstairs. Even with a floor between them it’s like he still feels phantom pain. Jii-chan leaves for a few hours and the next day Yuugi hears him yelling on the phone. After that his anger seems to smooth out, and for dinner they make hamburgers even though Yuugi’s supposed to avoid red meat until his blood pressure’s lower. Yuugi eats two and a half of them and then he and Jii-chan spend three hours playing a new board game until he’s falling asleep in his chair and Jii-chan sends him upstairs. 

He stays home until school starts. Kuriboh’s not moving to their place until two or three weeks after school starts, which he guesses makes sense. He’s never been in junior high before, he doesn’t know how different or exhausting it will be from primary school. He catches up with **thefuturelaughsfromtheceiling** , plays chess, and plays some of the hero MMORPG with Izuku. He also spends a lot of time staring at the book Nemuri-nee got him and trying to memorize the different components inside machines and how they work together. It’s a really nice book. He kind of wishes he had a cellphone or mp3 player like the ones the books shows, he’d like to try taking them apart and putting them back together. He eyes his cellphone a couple of times but he NEEDS his cellphone. And he thinks he’d need special screwdrivers or hex keys, he has a small set of screwdrivers from when Seto’s infinity cube broke and he had to replace the joints but they don’t look like they’d work. He also discovers online video tutorials on cell phone repair, which are cool even if most of them don’t have subtitles or only have like, voice to text subtitles so he can’t really understand what’s going on. 

Starting a new school is weird, even if it’s junior high so everyone is starting it at the same time. He doesn’t know how he feels about having to wear a uniform, on one hand it’s nice not to have to think about what to wear but the jacket-shirt is a little too big for him. Better than too small, looser clothes are always better than tighter, but he’d rather it be a too big shirt HE wanted to wear, not a too big shirt someone TOLD him to wear. He wishes he and Izuku could go to the same junior high, but Jii-chan said Orudera Junior High has a terrible history with IEPs, and Izuku had muttered something about his mom and villain crime rates near Yuugi’s school without making eye contact. Yuugi doesn’t think his school has THAT many more villain or hero fights near it than Izuku’s does, Yuugi just walks into ALL of them. 

There’s other different stuff. The campus is different, his commute is different, and while a lot of his classmates are the same, including Masaki-kun, there’s also new ones. The teachers are different but all of them seem to know about his situation and are really nice to him in a way that makes him think Jii-chan was extra terrifying. At least Nabu Junior High is closer to Izuku’s new school than the primary school was, so it’ll be easier for them to meet up once he stops being exhausted by stuff like walking. It’s really annoying. He’s excused from gym class until after summer break or his doctor clears him, but he doesn’t WANT to be excused from gym, he wants to go back to being healthy enough to hate gym. 

Most of his new classmates are sort of a blur except for two, who he keeps noticing in the sea anemone watching way before it felt like someone was watching with him. The weird, pay attention and wait for something to happen way. Both classmates have dirty blonde hair, the same last name, and scowl a lot, but one of them is a boy and the other is a girl. He thinks they’re twins. It’s weird though, he never sees both of them at the same time, and they sit in the same seat (he checked). The girl also only wears a boy’s uniform. Maybe they only can afford one uniform and trade-off who wears it and comes to class? 

Two weeks after class starts he’s heading home when he wanders into the girl classmate fighting with two teenagers wearing a different junior high uniform. She’s REALLY good at fighting. Like, one of the other teenagers is a head taller than her and the other one is covered in thorns (and ripped his uniform where the thorns came out, ugh, that’s going to take SO MUCH sewing to fix and trying to make holes that big not show is really tricky) and she’s still totally winning. The whole thing is over really quick and then both of the guys are on the ground and she’s panting. He doesn’t think she got hit ONCE. He must have said something out loud because suddenly her head snaps up and she’s glaring at him. 

He takes a step back and tries to think of what you’re supposed to say when you walk in on a classmate you kind of know punching other people you don’t know. “Um. You fight good? Is, uh, that part of your quirk?” People ask people about their quirks when they do something that looks hard, right? 

Her eyes narrow. “Very funny, asshole,” she says in a voice that means it isn’t funny and he’s supposed to know why, and stomps off. The two guys lying on the ground are moving like they’re about to get up and groaning, and Yuugi decides he needs to leave now. 

He runs into the boy classmate in another fight three days later. He fights just as good as his probably-sister. It’s two guys again, though they’re in different uniforms. One of them is covered in sparks and the other is bright green. Though maybe the green is because he just got punched in the stomach and is dry-heaving. Yuugi winces and turns around to go back the way he came. 

Two days later he runs into the girl classmate punching a guy in the nuts. The day after that, the boy classmate in a fight with three guys. Next week, the girl classmate fighting two guys again. Two days after THAT, the boy classmate against two guys who he thinks might have been some of the ones he or his sister were fighting before but honestly all of them are kind of starting to blur together. Yuugi knows his new school is closer to Mosu Epusa than his last one but he’s never run into this many fights, especially ones with the same two people, and honestly he’s kind of starting to worry about his classmates? At least he’s been avoiding hero and villain fights. 

After about two weeks of this the girl classmate stomps up to him before class starts and looms over his desk. She’s anger-spikey, tall, and has a giant bruise on her face. “Stop following me.” 

“I’m not following you,” says Yuugi, because he isn’t. 

“The fuck you aren’t,” she snaps. “So step the fuck off or-“ 

“Jounouchi-kun, leave Yuugi alone!” snaps Masaki-kun, appearing next to Yuugi’s desk and covered with flickering light that makes Yuugi’s eyes hurt even with his sunglasses. He scrunches over and puts his head on his desk and fiddles with his ear plugs to make it easier to focus on his breathing. He’s not sure how the thing between Masaki-kun and Jounouchi-kun (that’s their name! names.) resolves but class starts and they’re back at their desks and Masaki-kun has him eat lunch with her and some of their new classmates and he doesn’t run into Boy-Jounouchi-kun or Girl-Jounouchi-kun after class. 

The next day after school Yuugi’s too tired to walk straight home so he heads to a park that’s sort of on his way and sits on a bench next to some pine trees. He pulls a Rubik’s cube out of his bag, scrambles it, pulls out his phone and sets the timer, then closes his eyes and tries to solve the cube. Solving a Rubik’s cube with his eyes shut is tricky in a different way than solving them with his eyes open. He’s gotten pretty good at solving them with his eyes open, even if he can’t get his personal best to under 36 seconds. Though there was ONE time he managed to get to 31 seconds but he’s never repeated it and can’t tell if maybe he just set the timer wrong. 

Solved? He opens his eyes to check and hits the timer. Yes, solved! Took… one hundred and forty three seconds. 

Faster. 

He rescrambles the cube, resets the alarm, and closes his eyes again. 

Solved. One hundred and twenty three seconds. 

Again.

Solved. One hundred and fifteen seconds. 

Again. 

Solved. One hundred and three-

“What the hell,” says a familiar voice. Yuugi jerks up and the rest of the world slides back around him. Boy-Jounouchi-kun is standing next to him and staring. He has a bruise the same place his sister did. “Dude, that’s freaky.” Yuugi can’t tell if freaky is a good or bad thing the way he says it but the usual background anger spikiness he gets from Boy-Jounouchi-kun or his sister isn’t there so he thinks good. “Is solving weird puzzles your quirk or something?” 

Yuugi stares at the cube. He’s not sure how empathy would work with solving Rubik’s cubes. If empathy IS his quirk. Honestly, after his quirk almost killed him he should have at LEAST gotten to know what it is. “No?” 

“So how are you even doing that?” 

“There’s um. Equations and formulas for how to solve it? So if you know the formula well enough you don’t need to look at it.” 

“Ugh, so it’s just a stupid math thing.” Boy-Jounouchi-kun says math kind of like math came to his home and peed on his favorite shoes. 

“I could show you?” Yuugi offers, because he can’t NOT offer to explain a game to someone even if almost no one ever takes him up on it. 

Boy-Jounouchi-kun looks kind of surprised, or Yuugi thinks it’s surprised, but then he looks annoyed. “Like I want to waste my time with some stupid formula that won’t make any sense. Why aren’t you wearing sunglasses when it’s actually bright out? 

Yuugi’s grip on the cube tightens. He wishes it was heavier. He has pretty good aim, but throwing it won’t cause a lot of damage and he still can’t really run. “I need glasses for the lights indoors. Sunlight isn’t as loud as indoor lights.”

“So what, your quirk is you hear light?” 

He tries to look around the park without looking like he’s looking around the park. It’s empty other than the two of them. The pressure in his head pulses, almost gently. “…No.” 

“You quirkless?”

Yuugi blinks and his hand relaxes around the cube. Since meeting Izuku Yuugi has heard a lot of people say the word quirkless. Most people say it the way they say stupid or broken, but Boy-Jounouchi-kun says it like how you’d say someone’s hair colour. “I’m not quirkless.” 

Boy-Jounouchi-kun grunts. “What kind of- 

Yuugi knows he should pay attention but sees two teenage boys in uniforms that look sort of familiar entering the park. Boy-Jounouchi-kun sees him staring, turns to look, and swears loudly before turning fully and running at the two, who run at him. Punching and kicking and fight noises happen and Yuugi looks sort of despairingly at the Rubik’s cube. 

The two guys are groaning on the ground. Boy-Jounouchi-kun walks back up to him, breathing heavily. “Anyway. Stop following me.” He turns to leave. 

“I’m not following you, I was sitting on a bench! You came up and started talking to me!” yells Yuugi, because SERIOUSLY, he just wanted to sit down somewhere ALONE and QUIET until he felt like he could walk home, and he KNOWS yelling at the person who was kind of threatening him when they’re leaving is stupid but everything about this is stupid. 

“Ow, you’re the one with the hearing stuff, stop yowling like a chihuahua with crushed balls!” Boy-Jounouchi-kun yells back but keeps leaving. 

Yuugi kind of wants to yell back about how that doesn’t even make sense but the two guys are starting to get up and he has enough energy to leave, so he does.   
\----  
“Seriously, what part of ‘stop following me’ don’t-“ Girl-Jounouchi-kun starts to say when Yuugi and Izuku run into her at a shopping arcade during Golden Week. She stops. “Woah, is that a limited edition Silver Age Shikoku All Might box set???” 

“Yes!” says Izuku, who’s been clutching the box since they left the store and almost vibrating with excitement. “I’ve been looking for one for two years!”

“Where’d you find it? Was it Katsuichi’s place? He gets weird shit all the time, but it’s weird legit, not like Fukushamako who copies the boxes perfect but can’t find a counterfeiter that knows their ass from their face. Tsunako-baba keeps saying she’s gonna break his fingers again if he keeps selling bad fakes to her people-”

“Oh, I know her,” says Yuugi, since he just visited her pachinko parlor while Izuku was grabbing the box set. “She’s nice.” 

Girl-Jounouchi-kun’s face does something weird. “Uh, last time another group tried to edge in on her turf she gutted a dude with a broken bottle, and she breaks people’s arms if they cheat in her pachinko parlors.” 

“…She gives me extra pachinko tokens?” says Yuugi, because she does, and wow, he had NOT known that. He wondered if Jii-chan did. Probably. She played poker with him sometimes. “And she said she was worried I’d been away for so long and was glad to know I was doing better.” 

“Can you get a hobby that’s not pachinko?” asks Izuku. “Please?” 

“It’s been MONTHS since I was at a fight in one and I JUST figured out how to make my ear plugs work in pachinko parlors,” says Yuugi, because he did. 

“Okay, seriously, are you like some fight otaku? How many fights do you FIND?”

“All of them?” 

“Izuku!” 

“I don’t mean it in a bad way! I’ve gotten so many hero autographs because of you, except Endeavour’s.” He turns to Girl-Jounouchi-kun. “He’s not trying to look for them, he just finds them. You’re the classmate that fights a lot, right? If you do it further away from the school and not near his route home he’ll stop finding them.” 

“…Your quirk is finding fights?” 

“No,” says Izuku and Yuugi simultaneously. “It just happens so much everyone thinks it is,” Izuku then adds, which, RUDE. Yuugi tries to kick him in the shin but Izuku dodges. 

“I’m not TRYING to find them,” he mutters. Not that ANYONE listens.

“I know, I know,” says Izuku. Okay, maybe he won’t try to kick him in the shin again. This time. “Who’s your favorite hero?” 

“All-Might,” says Girl-Jounouchi-kun immediately. “He actually cares about being a hero, not just using his quirk to beat people up. Also, he punches hard enough to make the clouds do freaky shit.” 

“The Hiroshima fight, the Nagasaki fight, or the Nagoya fight?” 

“Nagoya, there was better footage and the villain was a dick. I wanted to punch him.” 

“He caused so much damage to their irrigation system, I knew a calcifying quirk was dangerous but I didn’t think about it on that scale. I filled up almost a quarter of a notebook with that fight!” 

“Yeah, you never think that kinda quirk could fuck stuff up like that. What about you, Mutou? You a hero otaku?” 

Yuugi zones back in. “Yuugi. No.” 

“Dude, we ain’t buddy-buddy, you’re not calling me by my first name.” 

“I don’t KNOW your first name, but I’m Yuugi,” says Yuugi. He has this conversation a lot. “You’re Jounouchi-kun, but I’m Yuugi.” 

“He has everyone call him by his first name. I’m Midoriya Izuku.”

“Jounouchi Katsuya,” says Girl-Jounouchi-kun, which, huh. Yuugi thought Katsuya was a boy’s name. “Your favorite hero?” 

“All-Might!” 

“Guess you got some taste Midoriya, even if you want Endeavour’s autograph. Number two’s a flaming pile of shit.” 

Izuku frowns. “Yes he’s the number two hero, yes his costume is on fire, yes his personality is… like that, but that insult was old the first year he made rank.” 

“He can get a new one when his ranking changes, so, you know, when his ass drops back to three or four. Or ten, twenty, a hundred.” 

“All-Might is NOT dropping in the rankings anytime soon, but comparatively Endeavour IS one of the strongest heroes out there, the numbers don’t support anyone currently on the Top Ten overtaking him unless he’s incapacitated in like, a career-ending way.”

“What about Hawks?” 

“The number eight? Oh, man, his feathers are amazing! Like he has to have low level telekinesis on them as part of his quirk, but I’m not sure if it’s an active control thing, or if they like, respond to his subconscious will?” 

“My neighbor’s brother’s cousin’s roommate who saw him fight says active control, she saw Hawks almost get his ass beat in a robbery because he got distracted with all the feathers.” 

“Wait, was that the series of robberies over in Shibuya? Or the ones closer to Shinjuku?” 

“Hey Jounouchi-kun,” says Yuugi. “What do you think happens, with the fire, when Endeavour farts?” 

Girl-Jounouchi-kun bursts out laughing. “What is it with you and him farting?” demands Izuku as Girl-Jounouchi-kun keeps laughing. “He’s been a hero for twenty YEARS, he’s stopped a lot of villains from hurting people, why is him farting all you ever want to bring up with him?” 

“It’s an important question!” 

“No it’s not! Everyone farts! Farting doesn’t make someone a bad hero” 

“He’s a bad hero cause he’s an asshole,” wheezes Girl-Jounouchi-kun, wiping her eyes. “Check out his property damage stats and his casualties. If you know how to look them up.” 

“I know how to look that up!” 

“Most people don’t.” Girl-Jounouchi-kun nods at Izuku and Yuugi. “Later, Midoriya. Mu- Yuugi. Pay more attention, maybe you can keep your butt out of fights before you get hurt.” 

Yuugi crosses his arms. “Maybe you stop getting into them.” 

“Yeah yeah, whatever.” She leaves. 

Izuku stares after her. “I forgot to ask if she was on any forums and if I could have her handle.” 

“Probably? There’s no point in being a hero otaku if you can’t find other hero otaku to argue with.” 

“Say the chess otaku.” 

“I’m not a chess otaku, I have too much to learn!”

“That’s not how being an otaku works!”   
\---  
After Golden Week Yuugi runs into Boy-Jounouchi-kun on the way home in the middle of ANOTHER fight. It’s two against one, and one of the guys is the spike guy from the first fight. Yuugi only remembers him because spikes. He wonders how many uniforms he goes through or how good he is at sewing. 

Boy-Jounouchi-kun seems to be winning like normal. Only Yuugi notices something moving and realizes there’s a third guy rushing at Boy-Jounouchi-kun’s back, and Yuugi doesn’t think Boy-Jounouchi-kun can see him, and Yuugi doesn’t know anything about fighting but he knows the more people you’re fighting against the harder it is and that doesn’t seem very fair. “Jounouchi-kun, behind!” 

Jounouchi doesn’t look at Yuugi, just turns and punches the guy rushing him. And then it’s like Boy-Jonouchi-kun sort of… shudders, or jerks, and then Boy-Jounouchi-kun is Girl-Jounouchi-kun, and she kicks the spike guy really hard and keeps fighting.

Oh. 

Oh wow. 

Jounouchi-kun can use WHATEVER bathroom he or she WANTS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was torn on how much about the drug and what exactly happened to put into the narrative. Some parts of that hopefully will come up about it later, along with Very Specific things that happened because of it that are definitely coming up in the plot. 
> 
> So the section with Bakugou was not only not supposed to be in this chapter, it wasn't supposed to exist, but I started writing and things just sort of snowballed from there. And there will be consequences from that meeting, past Izuku's shift in why he needs to become a hero. 
> 
> If a cat lives long enough and is well cared for in japanese mythology, when the cat dies it becomes a minor deity called a matatabi. If offerings are left out for it it will remain a benevolent spirit, but it can become a malevolent spirit if it outlives the people who use to leave it offerings. Yuugi has been very concerned about this since he was six. 
> 
> So Jounouchi is here! Hi Jounouchi. His quirk is changing his biological sex, more on that later. I had a hard time writing him because I'm used to hearing his VA in Japanese, and a lot of the verbal ticks/speech patterns he uses in Japanese don't really translate well to English. So cursing it is. 
> 
> I will keep bringing up farting and Endeavour. I can't be stopped and I won't be stopped. 
> 
> I realized after chapter one that one major consequence of Yuugi and Izuku being friends was that Yuugi can't become friends with Jounouchi the way he did in canon, so a lot of work went into trying to figure out how that happens here. No, they're not friends yet, but they're figuring each other out and NEXT CHAPTER some exciting things should happen for friendship to occur. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> So the question Izuku asks All-Might in canon is going to be a little different this time around. Let's see what else is different. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! This exists because I was ranting about Jonouchi's character versus Bakugou's character on tumblr, my brain went sideways, and things just sort of happened. I'm not sure how long this is going to be, (though i have at least the next two chapters plotted out, and an arc) or how often it's going to update. But I'm going to take this as far as it goes or have fun trying.


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